I was pleased to spend some time recently with a recently released book by historian Lucas E. Morel, author of Lincoln and the American Founding, part of the Concise Lincoln Library from Southern Illinois University Press (find out more about it here). Morel is Professor of Politics and Head of the Politics Department at Washington and Lee University.
The book contends that “without the ideals of the American Revolution, Lincoln’s most famous speeches would be unrecognizable….” That means Lincoln himself, as we know him today, would be unrecognizable. That’s huge. Can you speak to that for just a moment?
So many of the ways that Lincoln described American self-government derive from the principles and aspirations of the Declaration of Independence:
- “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”
- “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom”
- “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”
- “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.”
- “no man is good enough to govern another man, without that other’s consent”
- “Let us have faith that right makes might”
- “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.”
- “gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance”
- “the individual rights of man”
