Lincoln Daily Devotional

A static website and structured dataset based on The Believer’s Daily Treasure, a 19th-century Christian devotional long associated with President Abraham Lincoln and his personal reading.

This repository provides a faithful digital presentation of the devotional along with a reusable, machine-readable dataset intended for reading, study, or reuse without restriction.

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About the Project

The Believer’s Daily Treasure was first published in the mid-1800s and reflects the devotional language and scriptural usage common to that period, including extensive use of the King James Bible.

The devotional remained in circulation through later printings, most notably the 1957 reprint by Carl Sandburg commonly titled Lincoln’s Daily Devotional, as well as the modern edition currently published by Applewood Books. These editions have played an important role in preserving and sharing the text with new generations of readers.

This project builds on that tradition by presenting the devotional in a simple, static digital form and by providing a clean, structured dataset for others to reuse.

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Text Sources and Editorial Approach

The goal of this project is preservation and accuracy, not revision.

Editorial work focused on:

• Faithful transcription of historical poems, while updating bible references and verse text
• Correction of clear typographical and transcription errors that have propagated across editions
• Retention of historical language, spelling, and tone
• Consistent formatting of poetry and line breaks where source material varied
• Preservation of King James Bible language and references

One poem substitution present in later printings was removed in favor of the original poem in the devotional. No doctrinal, theological, or stylistic reinterpretation has been introduced.

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Enhancements in This Digital Edition

• Complete Scripture Text
  Physical printings often truncated verses to fit the page. This edition restores full verse text using the 1769 Oxford King James Version (KJV) while preserving original references and correcting minor citation errors where necessary.

• Accessibility and Usability
  Responsive layout for mobile and desktop, dark mode support, and fast page loads.

• Structured Data
  The devotional is provided as a single JSON dataset for easy reuse in other projects.

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Features

• Daily Entry Loading
  Automatically displays the correct devotional for the current date.

• Navigation
  Previous and next day navigation, plus a date picker to jump to any entry.

• Visual Design
  Clean, typography-focused layout inspired by historical printing and designed for screens.

• Static Architecture
  Fully static HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. No backend, database, or build tools required.

• Parallel Translations
  Includes the full King James Version (KJV) text and, where available, the English Standard Version (ESV) for comparison.

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Quick Start

No build tools or package managers are required.

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/AndreRobitaille/LincolnDevotional.git
   cd LincolnDevotional

2. Open index.html in your browser.

   Or run a local server:

   python3 -m http.server

   Then visit http://localhost:8000.

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Developer Tools

The repository includes Python scripts in the tools/ directory to manage data.

Setup

To fetch ESV verses, you need an API key from API.ESV.org. Create a .env file in the project root:

ESV_API_KEY=your_api_key_here

Scripts

• Fetch ESV Verses: python3 tools/fetch_esv.py --all
  Fetches verse text from the ESV API and caches it locally in data/esv_cache.json. Use the --help switch for additional options.

• Audit Data: python3 tools/audit_esv.py
  Checks for reference mismatches, empty text, or suspicious formatting.

• Clean Data: python3 tools/clean_esv.py
  Normalizes punctuation and capitalization in cached verses.