Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Abraham Lincoln's Premonitory Dream

Lincoln is my all-time favorite president. If you are a fan of Lincoln's you are probably well aware of the dream he had shortly before his assassination. Probably most are so familiar with this interesting tidbit of Lincoln trivia it doesn't bear repeating in detail here. I will just say that shortly before he was killed President Lincoln dreamed he was asleep and heard wailing and weeping of sorrow coming from downstairs in the White House. In his dream he got out of bed went looking for the source of the distress. From room to room he wandered but saw no one, although he still heard the crying. Finally he reached the East Room, where he found a corpse in funeral vestments lying upon a black catafalque. The corpse was being guarded by soldiers among the crowd of grievers. Mr. Lincoln asked one of the soldiers. "Who is dead in the White House?" The now familiar answer came: "The president; he was killed by an assassin." At that moment in the dream there came a loud outburst of grief that woke the slumbering president.
 
Now I had read about this many times. In fact, I have seen the dream reenacted in documentaries and movies about Lincoln. I always thought it would have been prudent had the president taken heed of that dream; that he should have increased his guards; that he should have lain low for a while. We can only imagine what a second Lincoln term would have been like.
 
What I found out only recently is that apparently Lincoln came to dismiss that dream as a possible premonition, although he was at first quite troubled and depressed by it. Close personal friend and sometimes bodyguard Ward Hill Lamon wrote a book of his memories of Lincoln (Recollections Of Lincoln), from which I take the following:
 
Once the President alluded to this terrible dream with some show of playful humor. "Hill," said he, "your apprehension of harm to me from some hidden enemy is downright foolishness. For a long time you have been trying to keep somebody—the Lord knows who—from killing me. Don't you see how it will turn out? In this dream it was not me, but some other fellow, that was killed. It seems that this ghostly assassin tried his hand on someone else. And this reminds me of an old farmer in Illinois whose family were made sick by eating greens. Some poisonous herb had got into the mess, and members of the family were in danger of dying. There was a half-witted boy in the family called Jake; and always afterward when they had greens the old man would say, 'Now, afore we risk these greens, let's try 'em on Jake. If he stands 'em, we're all right.' Just so with me. As long as this imaginary assassin continues to exercise himself on others I can stand it." He then became serious and said: "Well, let it go. I think the Lord in His own good time and way will work this out all right. God knows what is best."
 
From what I understand about Lincoln, he was a bit of a fatalist. He doesn't appear to have been the type of man who would have rearranged his life around a dream that might have been a premonition.
 

I have to say that I have listened to my dreams in the past, and feel ever stronger the need to do so now. I don't know exactly why I've gotten back in touch with my dreaming mind. I was away for a long time - or rather, I should say, I was dismissive. But I think I was doing myself a bit of a disservice. My instincts have always been good. The only real regrets I have had in life center on times when I went against my gut instincts.

8 comments:

  1. For evey dream that "comes true" or enlighten us, there are a million more that are nothing. Just saying. But have fun.

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    1. The way I think about it, my brain daily does the job it was designed to do: process millions of bits of information. Dreams seem to be a part of that process, I don't dismiss any of my brain's functions as "nothing" anymore than I would the functions of my kidneys, liver, heart, etc. Personally, I aim in the future to take my dreams as seriously as I do any symptom my body presents me. In the past I haven't always been very mindful of what my body is telling me.

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  2. I'm not sure that it is practical to heed a dream that turns out to be a premonition. If he hadn't died would it still be a premonition?

    Here's the thing, if his dream was about an assassin's bullet, how does one avoid that? Not go to the theatre? Not go to the stables? Not go to church? Not leave the White House? Not leave the bedroom? Stay in the bathroom?

    As well, wasn't Lincoln also hated? Would he not fear an assassin's bullet anyway and wouldn't that fear feed both his conscious and unconscious mind. In other words, not so much a premonition as a very real possibility due to the nature of his position and his positions.

    Just being conversational not adversarial.

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    1. I wouldn't think of you as adversarial. Those are good questions.

      First, I suppose is this question: is the future fixed or malleable? "To be forewarned is be forearmed," as the old saying goes. If the future is not fixed, perhaps due caution could alter the future foreseen in a premonition.

      Lincoln was fatalistic. He was raised among old school Calvinists. Even had he taken his dream as a premonition (and it seems he came to dismiss it as such) and taken it for granted that his end was being assassinated, he still could have used such "foreknowledge" to settle his accounts and put his house in order.

      Lincoln routinely received threats. It was his nature to dismiss these things and carry on with his duty. The sad thing is that on the night he was shot to death, it seems his lone body guard on duty had left his post and gone down the street to get a snoot-full of booze, allowing JWB full and easy access. What if a little more protection had been added? That would have seemed prudent to me in light of the anti-Lincoln sentiment and divided nation, apart from any premonitions. Just good sense.

      Whatever we make of Lincoln's dream, it remains true that hindsight is 20/20. If someone avoids disaster by heeding a premonition, how could it be proved the premonition would have come true had it not been heeded? But all dreams are not warnings. Somewhere in my notes I have a newspaper story about a pregnant woman who dreamed she was going to have quadruplets. (This was back in the 1950s, before the now common ultra sound technology.) Her doctor confirmed this through x-rays. I will have to look and see if I can locate it for a post. It is interesting, to say the least. But I'm just saying that all dreams aren't about impending death or disaster (though many seem to be).

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  3. I'm always glad to hear I'm still asking good questions. I don't know anything about Lincoln, though I'm learning a bit now.

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    1. I think you do ask good questions, and I'm so glad when you participate in the discussion here at my blog.

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  4. Quantum physics says that the observer can change an outcome by merely observing it. To me, that seems to say that we as human beings do have an effect on what goes on around us. There are some that say we create our own experiences. I read a book which attempted to explain how focused intention can affect outcomes. This would seem to be in line with what quantum theory postulates, actually more than postulates; having been proven repeatedly in the laboratory. Perhaps dreams, which fall into the premonitory category, are somehow related to this quantum phenomena.

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    1. I've been reading some of that same material. My mind is open. I'm a determinist but far from a fatalist.

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