On another veiled hand, the congressional aspirant lodged devils and concerns over devils within the rhetorical architecture of his allusion. And if Satan rise up against himself, and be divided, he cannot stand.” On one hand, Lincoln used this biblical tale as a template for contemporary political divisions. Recorded in three of the Bible’s gospel narratives, it began with Pharisees accusing Jesus of being in league with the “prince of devils.” Jesus replied, “How can Satan cast out Satan? … if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand. Lincoln and most of his audience knew “the house divided” reference well. For Lincoln’s campaign acceptance speech in June 1858, he borrowed from the Bible the line that came to serve as the speech’s unofficial title: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” This was both a statement about the state of the Union and a warning of what could befall the United States if it failed to resolve the imbroglio over admitting new states as either free or slave. Before and after receiving Smith’s letter, however, he did reference Satan during the campaign. Publicly, Lincoln neither elevated nor lowered the electoral stakes to those realms. “As I view the contest (tho we say it is between Douglass & Lincoln-) it is no less than a contest for the advancement of the kingdom of Heaven or the kingdom of Satan.”

The race signaled forces higher and lower, lighter and darker. The Lincoln-Douglas struggle, moreover, was much more than just another political event that pitted two men against one another for a legislative position. For him, the Bible, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Founding Fathers constituted one holy garment.

and by the fathers of the republic.” What others might view as separate strands of “religion” and “politics,” or “church” and “state,” Smith wove together tightly. He called upon Lincoln to remind all who would hear that “the bible teaches the same that is taught by the declaration of Independence-by the Constitution of the U.S. Smith, an Illinois farmer, encouraged Lincoln to take “the high ground” during the campaign. One month earlier, the Republican Party of Illinois had decided to run Lincoln for the Senate against Stephen A. “Douglas is a cuning dog & the devil is on his side,” wrote Abraham Smith to Abraham Lincoln in the summer of 1858. Weaving the Wicked Web of Antebellum Religion and Politics

Church of satan lord of chaos