{"id":3197,"date":"2026-07-03T21:07:54","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T21:07:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanmovershub.com\/?p=3197"},"modified":"2026-07-03T21:07:54","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T21:07:54","slug":"the-declaration-of-independence-is-lincolns-as-much-as-jeffersons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanmovershub.com\/?p=3197","title":{"rendered":"The Declaration of Independence is Lincoln\u2019s as much as Jefferson\u2019s"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The setting was as symbolic as the moment was tense. <\/p>\n

On February 22, 1861, a crowd gathered in Philadelphia\u2019s Independence Square for a flag-raising ceremony in honor of George Washington\u2019s birthday. The speaker \u2014 tall and gangly, with a craggy visage and a high-pitched voice \u2014 was Abraham Lincoln, president-elect of the United States.<\/p>\n

Read more Opinion: 250 years of self-government<\/a><\/p>\n

Over the previous nine weeks, seven Southern states had seceded from the Union. Many feared that more would follow. Before exiting the south entrance of Independence Hall for the ceremony, Lincoln spent a few reflective moments in the Assembly Room \u2014 the storied space where the Declaration of Independence had been signed and where the Constitution had been crafted. <\/p>\n

Perhaps he thought of Thomas Jefferson, who had composed the declaration\u2019s first draft, or of Washington, who had done more than any other to secure independence on the fields of battle and to establish the Constitution in the councils of state. Liberty and union \u2014 these were the high ideals that Lincoln had long championed. <\/p>\n

These were the principles that secession imperiled.<\/p>\n

Lincoln stood on a temporary wooden platform draped in bunting. As he looked out over the crowd, Independence Hall \u2014 the shrine of the founding \u2014 stood behind him. The future before him was profoundly uncertain; the prospect of national ruin was real. He spoke without notes.<\/p>\n

The setting all but compelled Lincoln to speak about the Declaration of Independence. What surprised his audience was not the subject he chose, but the fervor with which he addressed it. <\/p>\n

\u201cI have never,\u201d he intoned, \u201chad a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.\u201d Rather than surrender the declaration\u2019s core principles, he continued, \u201cI would rather be assassinated on this spot.\u201d <\/p>\n

These were not idle words at a time when the risk of assassination was clear, present and pervasive. Lincoln summarized the declaration\u2019s principles as an overarching commitment to \u201cliberty for all.\u201d The stakes of secession\u2019s threat to those principles were colossal \u2014 almost cosmic. <\/p>\n

Accordingly, Lincoln affirmed and extolled \u201cthat sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but I hope, to the world, for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weight would be lifted from the shoulders of all men.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lincoln was not exaggerating when he said that the whole of his political thought derived from the Declaration of Independence. For Lincoln, the declaration was more than revolutionary rhetoric or patriotic ornament. It was the moral heart of the American order \u2014 the bedrock of his political philosophy. <\/p>\n

To Lincoln, the declaration was the \u201capple of gold\u201d; the Constitution and Union were the \u201cpicture of silver\u201d framed around it. Lincoln\u2019s life and thought present an extended commentary, in word and deed, on the declaration\u2019s key clauses. It is the richest and most consequential commentary in our history. <\/p>\n

\n

The principle of liberty \u201cclears the path for all, gives hope to all, and, by consequence, enterprise and industry to all.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Abraham Lincoln<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is a commentary worth revisiting as we commemorate our national semiquincentennial \u2014 the declaration\u2019s 250th birthday. For Lincoln not only expounded the declaration; he transfigured it. When we celebrate the declaration this year, it is Lincoln\u2019s declaration that we honor.<\/p>\n

Lincoln\u2019s understanding of the declaration evolved over time, finding its fullest formulation in his most canonical statements \u2014 the Gettysburg Address and his second inaugural speech. Intriguingly, the textual arc of his understanding proceeded in reverse, emphasizing the declaration\u2019s sonorous clauses in the opposite order from how they appear in the text. <\/p>\n

We can trace that ascent by moving backward through the declaration itself \u2014 from \u201cthe consent of the governed\u201d to \u201cthe pursuit of happiness\u201d to \u201cliberty\u201d to \u201ccreated equal.\u201d This order will illuminate the path of Lincoln\u2019s progression, highlighting how he thought, as he lived, in crescendo.<\/p>\n

Democracy and slavery<\/h3>\n

Lincoln\u2019s reading of the declaration \u2014 and hence the whole of his political creed \u2014 was rooted in his understanding of \u201cthe laws of nature and of nature\u2019s God.\u201d All legitimate authority, he believed, must yield to those laws. <\/p>\n

Democracy requires moral right, not just majority rule. There can, Lincoln said, be \u201cno just rule other than that of moral and abstract right,\u201d which encompasses \u201cthe right of a people to \u2018life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness\u2019\u201d \u2014 their right, that is, to govern themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cAccording to our ancient faith,\u201d Lincoln said in 1854, in a speech that marked his return to politics, \u201cthe just powers of governments are derived from the consent of the governed.\u201d This \u201cancient faith\u201d applied to the plantation as surely as the polling place. Lincoln loathed slavery all his life, not least because it represented the quintessence of government without the consent of the governed. <\/p>\n

When one man \u201cgoverns himself,\u201d Lincoln said, \u201cthat is self-government; but when he governs himself, and also another man,\u201d without that man\u2019s consent, \u201cthat is more than self-government; that is despotism.\u201d <\/p>\n

It was despotism, moreover, compounded by tyranny. In slavery, he explained, \u201cthe master not only governs the slave without his consent; but he governs him by a set of rules altogether different from those which he prescribes for himself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lincoln had no patience for those who, channeling John C. Calhoun, insisted that slavery was \u201ca positive good,\u201d mutually beneficial to enslavers and enslaved. In response, Lincoln mocked the pro-slavery apologists with devastating irony. <\/p>\n

\u201cAs a good thing,\u201d he quipped, \u201cslavery is strikingly peculiar in this: that it is the only good thing which no man ever seeks the good of for himself.\u201d And again: \u201calthough volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it, by being a slave himself.\u201d <\/p>\n

Lincoln\u2019s opposition to slavery was rooted in a democratic golden rule. \u201cAs I would not be a slave,\u201d he observed, \u201cso I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.\u201d <\/p>\n

Democracy, for Lincoln, meant refusing to impose on others what you would not willingly endure yourself. \u201cThis is a world of compensations,\u201d he said, \u201cand he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave.\u201d Lincoln here used the term consent advisedly. <\/p>\n

It was utterly incompatible with \u201cthe consent of the governed\u201d to do unto others what one would never consent to oneself.<\/p>\n

The pursuit of happiness<\/h3>\n

Government by the consent of the governed should enable the governed to pursue their own ends. For Lincoln, the pursuit of happiness required a realm of equitable opportunity \u2014 \u201can open field and a fair chance\u201d for all to seek and all to strive. <\/p>\n

The American Union, as Lincoln saw it, existed \u201cto elevate the condition of men; to lift artificial weights from all shoulders; to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all; to afford all an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lincoln himself was a consummate striver. The tales of his prodigious reading \u2014 the lad reading by firelight, walking miles to borrow a volume or pausing while hoeing to read one more page \u2014 are familiar, and they are true. Education and work were the dual engines of Lincoln\u2019s ambition, and they served him surpassingly well. He had almost boundless faith that they would serve others, too. <\/p>\n

In August 1864, Lincoln reviewed an Ohio regiment outside the executive mansion. In his brief remarks, the president succinctly set forth what later generations would call the \u201cAmerican dream.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cI happen temporarily to occupy this big White House,\u201d he said. \u201cI am a living witness that any one of your children may look to come here as my father\u2019s child has.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n

Over time, the logic of equality progressively swallowed the limitations.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Lincoln was a child of profound poverty, the son of an illiterate father. He attributed his rise, and the possibility that others might similarly rise, to the combined forces of property, commerce, education and work. <\/p>\n

Lincoln celebrated property as \u201cthe fruit of labor,\u201d calling it \u201cdesirable\u201d and \u201ca positive good in the world.\u201d Thanks to property and free enterprise, \u201cthe hired laborer of yesterday, labors on his own account to-day; and will hire others to labor for him to-morrow. Advancement \u2014 improvement in condition \u2014 is the order of things in a society of equals.\u201d This being so, failure to advance was almost a moral failing. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf any continue through life in the condition of the hired laborer,\u201d Lincoln said, \u201cit is not the fault of the system, but because of either a dependent nature which prefers it, or improvidence, folly, or singular misfortune.\u201d Only that last clause prevented Lincoln from blaming the poor for remaining in poverty. <\/p>\n

\u201cWork, work, work,\u201d Lincoln told an aspiring lawyer, \u201cis the main thing.\u201d And he practiced what he preached. A White House aide observed that \u201cthe president\u2019s capacity for work was wonderful. \u2026 Each hour he was busy.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a superb book titled \u201cThe Pursuit of Happiness,\u201d Jeffrey Rosen argues that, for America\u2019s founding generation, the pursuit of happiness meant the cultivation of virtue \u2014 the quest to be good, not just feel good. Lincoln, who saw himself politically as the exponent and heir of \u201cthose noble fathers \u2014 Washington, Jefferson and Madison,\u201d was also their successor in this. <\/p>\n

He saw the pursuit of happiness as inseparable from the moral disciplines that make happiness possible: reason, prudence and charity; education, humility and work. Happiness, for Lincoln, meant self-command, not unbridled appetite. <\/p>\n

It was to be the master of no one but oneself. <\/p>\n

That pursuit was propelled by hope. \u201cFree labor,\u201d he said, \u201chas the inspiration of hope,\u201d whereas \u201cpure slavery has no hope.\u201d Hope, for Lincoln, was the emotional manifestation of freedom. Its negation was central to slavery\u2019s crime.<\/p>\n

Liberty and the Civil War<\/h3>\n

Freedom gave hope a path to fruition. \u201cThe principle of \u2018Liberty to all,\u2019\u201d he said, was \u201cthe principle that clears the path for all, gives hope to all, and, by consequence, enterprise and industry to all.\u201d Slavery, of course, was the antithesis of all these things. <\/p>\n

Read more Even Thomas Jefferson needed an editor. America still thrives when different ideas collide<\/a><\/p>\n

It negated any path forward, any hope for the future, and hence it eroded enterprise and sapped industry. Accordingly, Lincoln insisted, \u201cthere can be no moral right in connection with one man\u2019s making a slave of another.\u201d <\/p>\n

This basic insight underscored the deep contradiction \u2014 the divided soul \u2014 at the heart of the American order. Lincoln saw the issue in stark moral terms. \u201cSlavery,\u201d he said, \u201cis founded in the selfishness of man\u2019s nature \u2014 opposition to it, in his love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely, as slavery extension brings them, shocks, and throes, and convulsions must ceaselessly follow.\u201d <\/p>\n

Lincoln\u2019s love of liberty was inseparable from his commitment to the rule of law. That commitment was tested during the Civil War. Lincoln felt keenly the tension of having to curb liberties to preserve liberty. <\/p>\n

\u201cAre all the laws but one to go unexecuted,\u201d he famously asked, \u201cand the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated?\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cMust a government,\u201d he asked elsewhere, \u201cof necessity be too strong for the liberties of its own people or too weak to maintain its own existence?\u201d <\/p>\n

\n

For Lincoln, the pursuit of happiness required a realm of equitable opportunity \u2014 \u201can open field and a fair chance\u201d for all to seek and all to strive.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

On the whole, Lincoln struck a measured balance regarding wartime civil liberties. \u201cWhat is surprising in the case of Lincoln\u2019s presidency,\u201d writes Allen C. Guelzo, a Lincoln historian, \u201cis how few such dents were made in civil liberties, especially compared to what he might otherwise have done, and in the context of four years of bloody civil war.\u201d <\/p>\n

Lincoln employed the powers of the presidency aggressively, and although he sometimes strained at constitutional limits, he never claimed an open-ended power to transcend them. <\/p>\n

Perhaps most significantly, Lincoln never moved a finger to impede the ordinary course of elections. As far as we can tell, he never even considered doing so. He allowed the presidential election of 1864 to proceed on schedule, even though it appeared, until some 11th-hour battlefield victories shifted the scales, that Lincoln was due for a drubbing. <\/p>\n

Lincoln long believed he would lose that election. And there can be little doubt that, if he had lost, he would have honored the outcome and retired peacefully to private life. Lincoln\u2019s commitment to the sanctity of elections and the sovereignty of the law was not theoretical. That commitment was tested when defeat seemed likely, and Lincoln passed the test resoundingly.<\/p>\n

The same was not true of the slaveholding South. Ironically, the South rejected the outcome of the 1860 election for the sake of preserving slavery, and by so doing hastened slavery\u2019s final demise. Lincoln, who would never violate the law to interfere with Southern slavery, ultimately destroyed slavery when a war waged to preserve the Union coalesced into a war to free the enslaved. Emancipation began as a means and became an end. <\/p>\n

The Emancipation Proclamation was a war measure \u2014 an exercise of Lincoln\u2019s constitutional authority as commander in chief. That authority did not, in Lincoln\u2019s understanding, extend to the so-called border states \u2014 the slave states that remained in the Union and were thus not subject to Lincoln\u2019s authority to suppress rebellion and restore the rule of law. <\/p>\n

Freedom in those states would require a constitutional amendment. In the fullness of time, Lincoln helped see to that, too. He had the constitutional discipline to ensure that freedom was enshrined in the nation\u2019s fundamental law, not merely proclaimed by emergency decree.<\/p>\n

Lincoln, Douglass and equality for all<\/h3>\n

The declaration\u2019s clause about equality was the one Lincoln approached most cautiously \u2014 and ultimately most consequentially. \u201cTo us,\u201d Lincoln said in 1860, \u201cit appears natural to think that slaves are human beings; men, not property; that some of the things, at least, stated about men in the Declaration of Independence apply to them as well as to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Modern readers rejoice at the first half of this quotation but wince at the second. Why the hesitation? Why only \u201csome of the things\u201d? Why not all?<\/p>\n

Lincoln\u2019s record on race is mixed, though some of the statements that modern readers find most painful were couched in terms of popular opinion, and in some cases he later distanced himself from those remarks. Lincoln did not, at least initially, regard Black people as his social equals, and there were limits to his understanding of the declaration\u2019s dictum that \u201call men are created equal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Responding to Stephen A. Douglas\u2019 race-baiting in the first of their famous debates, Lincoln noted that \u201cI agree with Judge Douglas that (the Black man) is not my equal in many respects \u2014 certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas and the equal of every living man.\u201d <\/p>\n

In the same speech, Lincoln insisted that \u201cthere is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.\u201d <\/p>\n

Tellingly, equality was always, for Lincoln, a foundational principle, subject to limitations. Over time, the logic of the principle progressively swallowed the limitations.<\/p>\n

One expression of this development was personal, as in Lincoln\u2019s relationship with Frederick Douglass, the formerly enslaved abolitionist leader. Lincoln received Douglass in his White House office and insisted that Douglass be admitted to his second inauguration ball. <\/p>\n

Douglass himself reported that Lincoln received him with significantly more than courtesy. In December 1863, Douglass told a Philadelphia audience that Lincoln had treated him in the same way \u201cyou have seen one gentleman receive another. \u2026 I tell you I felt big there.\u201d <\/p>\n

Lincoln, Douglass continued, was \u201cthe first great man that I talked with in the United States freely, who in no single instance reminded me of the difference between himself and myself, of the difference of color, and I thought that all the more remarkable because he came from a State where there were black laws.\u201d <\/p>\n

On another occasion, Douglass animatedly told a visitor that Lincoln had \u201ctreated me as a man; he did not let me feel for a moment that there was a difference in the color of our skins!\u201d<\/p>\n

Early in Lincoln\u2019s presidency, Douglass had been quite critical in what he saw as the president\u2019s reluctance and delay in matters of racial equality. Douglass\u2019 criticism softened significantly after he met Lincoln and got to know him personally. Douglass moved from disappointment to qualified admiration as Lincoln moved from a cautious to a more capacious understanding of \u201ccreated equal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Toward the end of his life, Lincoln, who began with a restricted concept of equality, found those restrictions increasingly difficult to maintain. Or perhaps Lincoln\u2019s desire for equal civil rights had been there all along, but he was unwilling to air it publicly until he judged that the nation was ready to hear it.<\/p>\n

\n

Lincoln not only expounded the declaration; he transfigured it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In any event, Lincoln\u2019s final speeches implied support for equal education and citizenship. Lincoln called in his last public address for \u201cgiving the benefit of public schools equally to black and white.\u201d \u201cFree labor,\u201d he said, \u201cinsists on universal education,\u201d which would hasten \u201cthe profitable and agreeable combination of labor with cultivated thought.\u201d He also expressed support for giving suffrage to educated Black people, as well as to Black veterans of the Union Army.<\/p>\n

In his audience, an angry young actor fumed at the prospect, and vowed to prevent it. On the evening of Good Friday, April 14, 1865, an armed John Wilkes Booth entered Ford\u2019s Theatre, casually made his way to the balcony and president\u2019s box, opened the door and shot Lincoln fatally in the back of the head.<\/p>\n

All honor to Lincoln<\/h3>\n

When Lincoln spoke at the dedication of the battlefield at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863, he fused liberty and equality. The \u201cnew nation\u201d set forth by virtue of the Declaration of Independence had been \u201cconceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.\u201d <\/p>\n

The Civil War was a test of that proposition \u2014 a test that transcended America\u2019s borders \u2014 a test \u201cwhether \u2026 any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.\u201d Its endurance, Lincoln continued, would require \u201ca new birth of freedom,\u201d as well as a firm resolve \u201cthat government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

As we celebrate the declaration\u2019s 250th anniversary, it is this, too, that we are celebrating \u2014 a prairie lawyer\u2019s resolve to make its core principles a reality for all people. In this anniversary month and year, we are honoring Lincoln\u2019s declaration, at least as much as Jefferson\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Lincoln had reservations about Jefferson\u2019s personal moral character, even as he lauded Jefferson\u2019s public achievements.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll honor to Jefferson,\u201d Lincoln wrote in 1859 \u2014 \u201cto the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.\u201d<\/p>\n

I say, all honor to Lincoln \u2014 who in an even sterner crisis helped move our troubled nation toward making that \u201cabstract truth\u201d a lived reality. May we move it further still. <\/p>\n

In an 1858 speech, Lincoln urged his hearers to \u201ccome back to the truths\u201d of the Declaration of Independence. Those truths, he said, formed an \u201celectric cord\u201d linking \u201cthe hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men\u201d across time and space. With Lincoln\u2019s summons ringing in our ears, let his own words provide the benediction to this year\u2019s commemorations:<\/p>\n

\u201cWith malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation\u2019s wounds, \u2026 (and) to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.\u201d <\/p>\n

This story appears in the July\/August 2026 issue of<\/i> Deseret Magazine<\/i> under the headline \u201cLincoln\u2019s declaration.\u201d <\/i>Learn more about how to subscribe<\/i>.<\/i><\/p>\n

Read more Opinion: America celebrates liberty. But can it still practice mercy?<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lincoln placed the Declaration\u2019s ideals at the moral heart of America \u2014 and he was willing to defend them in the name of \u2018all men\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3196,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-magazine"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Declaration of Independence is Lincoln\u2019s as much as Jefferson\u2019s - American Movers Hub<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/americanmovershub.com\/?p=3197\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Declaration of Independence is Lincoln\u2019s as much as Jefferson\u2019s - 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