to the States of the Union for their adoption. This amendment finally passed Congress the last of January, 1865. It was the crowning work of the Lincoln Emancipation.

CHAPTER XV

LINCOLN'S INTERPRETATION OF THE

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

IF America had done nothing else than to give the world two such apostles of democracy as Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, she would have immortalized herself for all coming ages.

As Jefferson was the most distinguished author of the Declaration of Independence, so Lincoln has proven its most distinguished interpreter.

So far as political discussion in the press and public forum was concerned, the Declaration of Independence had very largely gone into eclipse after the surrender of Yorktown in 1781. The men who framed the Declaration of Independence did not frame the Constitution of the United States. There was not a single line of the former in the latter. Save here and there a solitary voice crying in the wilderness, that Declaration of Independence and its immortal principles of personal and political liberty was nothing but a memory.

Indeed, in a large section of the country to refer to it was, to say the least, lese-majesté, and it remained the practical, patriotic task of Lincoln to resurrect the principles of the Declaration of Independence and to challenge the advancing hosts of slavery to the doctrines of Jefferson as announced and adopted in that Declaration.

What Aristotle was to his great teacher, Plato, Lincoln was to his great teacher, Jefferson, and it may be

observed here, for it is an historical fact, that Abraham Lincoln has quoted Jefferson more favorably and frequently than he has quoted all other American statesmen combined.

It would be impossible, as it would be inadvisable, to give all the references Lincoln has made to the doctrines of Jefferson in or out of the Declaration of Independence. But a few references will be most opportune for this chapter and this century.

Stephen A. Douglas was in 1857 the greatest political leader of the Democratic party, that had been in control of the national government in all its councils, save a few brief and irregular intervals, since the days of George Washington.

Douglas, known as the "Little Giant" of Illinois, was a good lawyer, a great orator, and was looked forward to as the candidate of his party for the presidency of the United States.

He made a speech, upon invitation of the federal grand jury of Springfield, Illinois, in 1857, in which he said, among other things, that "all men are created equal," meant only that "British subjects on this continent were equal to British subjects born and residing in Great Britain."

The speech was concededly a very able one and aroused wide comment throughout Illinois. A number of Lincoln's friends at once appealed to him to answer that speech. Lincoln accepted the invitation, and made what was probably one of the strongest and soundest political arguments of his life. In the course of his address he used this language as the fair and sensible interpretation of the Jeffersonian proposition that "all men are created equal":

"I think the authors of that notable instrument

intended to include all men; but they did not intend to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all were equal in color, size, intellect, moral developments, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness in what respects they did consider all men equal-equal in certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This they said and this they meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were then actually enjoying that equality, nor yet that they were about to confer it upon them. In fact, they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit. They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and, even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere."

One year thereafter, on August 12, 1858, and also before the Douglas debates, Lincoln made the speech at Beardstown, Illinois, in which he recurs to the same matter but at somewhat greater length. The report of this speech was written by Mr. Horace White of the Chicago Tribune:

"These by their representatives in old Independence Hall said to the whole race of men: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights: that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' This was their

majestic interpretation of the economy of the universe. This was their lofty, and wise, and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to his creatures—yes, gentlemen, to all his creatures, to the whole great family of man. In their enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on and degraded and imbruted by its fellows: They grasped not only the whole race of man then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the farthest posterity. They erected a beacon to guide their children, and their children's children, and the countless myriads who should inhabit the earth in other ages. Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so they established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, none but white men, or none but Anglo-Saxon white men were entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began, so that truth and justice and mercy and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land; so that no man would hereafter dare to limit and circumscribe the great principles on which the temple of liberty was being built.

"Now, my countrymen, if you have been taught doctrines conflicting with the great landmarks of the Declaration of Independence; if you have listened to suggestions which would take away from its grandeur and mutilate the fair symmetry of its proportions; if you have been inclined to believe that all men are