Writing to me again under date of Jan. 12, 1889, Mr. Grover says: "I knew Mr. Lincoln in Illinois and in Washington. I was in the War office, for a time, in a department which had charge of the President's books, so-called. I met him in passing between the White House and the buildings then occupied by the War Department, almost every day. I often had to go to Mr. Stanton's office, and have often seen Mr. Lincoln there. I frequently had to go to the White House to see him. It was known to all of his acquaintances that he was a Liberal or nationalist." JUDGE JAMES M. NELSON. The last, and in some respects the most important, of our Washington witnesses is Judge James M. Nelson. Judge Nelson for many years has been a resident of New York, but he formerly lived in Kentucky and Illinois, Lincoln's native and adopted states. He is a son of Thomas Pope Nelson, a distinguished member of Congress from Kentucky, and the first United States Minister to Turkey. His great grandfather was Thomas Nelson, Jr., a signer of the Declaration of Independence from Virginia. He was long and intimately acquainted with Lincoln both in Illinois and Washington. About the close of 1886, or early in 1887, Judge Nelson published his "Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln" in the Louisville, Ky., _Times_. In reference to Lincoln's religious opinions he says: "In religion, Mr. Lincoln was about of the same belief as Bob Ingersoll, and there is no account of his ever having changed. He went to church a few times with his family while he was President, but so far as I have been able to find out he remained an unbeliever." "Mr. Lincoln in his younger days wrote a book," says Judge Nelson, "in which he endeavored to prove the fallacy of the plan of salvation and the divinity of Christ." I have yet another passage from Judge Nelson's "Reminiscences" to present, a passage which, more than anything else in this volume, perhaps, is calculated to provoke the wrath of Christian claimants. To lend an air of plausibility to their claims these claimants are continually citing expressions of a seemingly semi-pious character occasionally to be met with in his speeches and state papers. These expressions, in a measure accounted for by Mr. Herndon, Colonel Lamon, and others, are still further explained by a revelation from his own lips. Judge Nelson says: "I asked him once about his fervent Thanksgiving Message and twitted him with being an unbeliever in what was published. 'Oh,' said he, 'that is some of Seward's nonsense, and it pleases the fools.'" CHAPTER XIII. OTHER TESTIMONY AND OPINIONS