Lincoln and the Declaration of Independence: Courage, ideals, liberty and fragility

In remarks at Independence Hall in 1861, President Abraham Lincoln shared the roots of his political philosophy while reflecting on the cornerstone of the republic. “I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.” He added, admiringly, “I have often pondered over the dangers which were incurred by the men who assembled here. It was not the mere matter of the separation of the colonies from the mother land; but something in that Declaration giving liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but hope to the world for all future time.” That hope, the American political creed, declared to the world on July 4, 1776, that “All men are created equal.”

It was with good reason that Lincoln, as devoted a student of the Declaration of Independence as any American president—with the possible exception of its author, Thomas Jefferson—pointed to the courage of those who signed the Declaration. The Declaration was an act of treason against the Crown, which prompted Benjamin Franklin to say, at the signing, “We must all hang together, or most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.” The unity of the signers was reflected in the closing sentence: “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

The pledge of life, fortune, and honor—essentially, all that a person has to offer—to support the Declaration, the premise and promise of which was a new republic and a vision of liberty and governance that would light the way for the rest of the world—what Lincoln, like Jefferson, called the “best hope for mankind”—represented a defining moment in Lincoln’s political education, a point of light that informed his worldview and shaped his goals and pursuits until his death. “The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society,” Lincoln observed, particularly that all men are created equal. Lincoln’s admiration for Jefferson was unabashed. “All honor to Jefferson,” a man Lincoln applauded for introducing into a revolutionary document “an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, day-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.”

Lincoln’s exposure of the fragility of the republic, a characteristic with which he was painfully familiar as president engaged in an epochal battle to save the Union, reminded him then, as it reminds us now, that the Declaration of Independence, which emphasizes at its core the sanctity and centrality of the individual and the  corresponding right to self-governance, is not universally shared. Jefferson’s elegant prose stirs most readers, from its majestic opening— “When, in the course of human events”—to its inspiring, yet sobering close—“with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge our lives”—but some in high office are not persuaded by its appeal to the unalienable right of equality and its sequential expression in the Constitution of “the equal protection of the law,” which is critical to America’s progress and liberty.

In 1838, in his prescient address to the Young Men’s Lyceum in Springfield, Lincoln addressed the threats to the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. He focused on the danger to America from within America, which he perceived to be the real threat, not dangers from abroad. That internal threat reflected not only the citizenry’s retreat from duty to honor and exalt constitutional principles and the rule of law, but also the failure of governmental officials to perform their institutional responsibilities, the duties of their office, including obedience to the rule of law. The result, predictably, would be constitutional failure.

As we approach the year-long celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we hear, but do we heed, Lincoln’s voice? We are witness to a long train of executive abuses and usurpations, many of which have been catalogued in this space, as well as the collapse of Congress as a meaningful cog in the system of checks and balances. The Supreme Court, moreover, has embarked on a path of empowering the president beyond the terms of the Constitution.

David Adler, Ph.D., is a noted author who lectures nationally and internationally on the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and Presidential power. He can be reached at david.adler@alturasinstitute.com.