What Is the Connection Between Lincoln and the Declaration of Independence?

My VIP for this week is President Abraham Lincoln and his connection to the Declaration of Independence. According to Justin Collings in his article titled “Lincoln transformed the Declaration of Independence” published in the Deseret News, “Lincoln placed the Declaration’s ideals at the moral heart of America – and he was willing to defend them in the name of ‘all men.’” Collings wrote, “Abraham Lincoln arguably advanced the cause of the Declaration of Independence more than any other American – even the Declaration’s author.

The setting was as symbolic as the moment was tense.

On February 22, 1861, a crowd gathered in Philadelphia’s Independence Square for a flag-raising ceremony in honor of George Washington’s birthday. The speaker – tall and gangly, with a craggy visage and a high-pitched voice – was Abraham Lincoln, president-elect of the United States.

Over the previous nine weeks, seven Southern states had seeded 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 – the storied space where the Declaration of Independence had been signed and where the Constitution had been crafted.

Perhaps he thought of Thomas Jefferson, who had composed the declaration’s 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 – these were the high ideals that Lincoln had long championed.

These were the principles that secession imperiled.

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

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.

“I have never,” he intoned, “had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.” Rather than surrender the declaration’s core principles, he continued, “I would rather be assassinated on this spot.”

These were not idle words at a time when the risk of assassination was clear, present and pervasive. Lincoln summarized the declaration’s principles as an overarching commitment to “liberty for all.” The stakes of secession’s threat to those principles were colossal – almost cosmic.

Accordingly, Lincoln affirmed and extolled “that 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.”

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.

To Lincoln, the declaration was the “apple of gold”; the Constitution and Union were the “picture of silver” framed around it. Lincoln’s life and thought present an extended commentary, in word and deed, on the declaration’s key clauses. It is the richest and most consequential commentary in our history.

The principle of liberty “clears the path for all; gives hope to all, and, by consequence, enterprise and industry to all.” – Abraham Lincoln

It is a commentary worth revisiting as we commemorate our national semiquincentennial – the declaration’s 250^th birthday. For Lincoln not only expounded the declaration; he transfigured it. When we celebrate the declaration this year, it is Lincoln’s declaration that we honor.

Lincoln’s understanding of the declaration evolved over time, finding its fullest formulation in his most canonical statements – the Gettysburg Address and his second inaugural speech.  Intriguingly, the textual arc of his understanding proceeded in reverse, emphasizing the declaration’s sonorous clauses in the opposite order from how they appear in the text….