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đŸȘ” The Threshold

The Declaration's equality promise was made legally operative only through later social movements

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The Declaration’s equality promise was made legally operative only through later social movements

Evidence

Four score and seven years later, in his 1863 address at Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln singled out 1776 as the year when the United States was “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Lifting whole phrases from the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln elevated 1776 over 1787, when the founders framed the Constitution, or 1791, when the states ratified the Bill of Rights, and placed human equality on a par with individual liberty in the pantheon of American values. In doing so, he followed a generation of American abolitionists and women’s rights advocates as reflected in William Lloyd Garrison’s 1833 Declaration of Sentiments of the American Anti-Slavery Society and Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s 1848 Declaration of Sentiments, both of which appealed to the legacy of 1776 in asserting rights to human equality under law. As Lincoln understood the Declaration of Independence, the promise of “certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” applied to all. 
 Lincoln, it was an aspirational document of ongoing relevance that “contemplated the progressive improvement in the condition of all men everywhere” and not merely “an interesting memorial of the dead past.” Its proclamation by Congress gave enduring meaning to 1776. — Edward J. Larson, Declaring Independence, 355

Categorization

  • XREF: Strongly links to the course on how foundational legal texts (Declaration vs Constitution) are continuously re-read by later generations to expand the reach of equality and liberty. — connects to: Virginia’s ‘natural rights’ clause was drafted to exclude enslaved Africans. — Edward J. Larson, Declaring Independence, 199; The Declaration’s authority depended on mass proclamation, not just a vote. — Edward J. Larson, Declaring Independence, 225; The Declaration of the Rights of Man gave free-coloreds a universalist legal foundation (+3 more)
  • SEED: Article angle: abolitionist and women’s-rights ‘Declarations of Sentiments’ as a genre that deliberately re-invokes 1776 to claim inalienable rights under law, and how Lincoln canonized that interpretive move at Gettysburg.
  • QUESTION: Interesting interpretive question: what made Lincoln’s reading of ‘all men are created equal’ as aspirational rather than merely historical succeed where earlier abolitionist readings stalled?

Broader Connections

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