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ABSTRACT
A scholarly consensus has emerged in recent years that the Declaration of Independence was the “apple of gold” in Abraham Lincoln’s anti-slavery political thought and moral grounding. Prior to Congress’s passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, however, he had mentioned the document only twice, and in his Peoria Address of October 1854, he referred to it as “the white man’s charter of freedom.” This essay traces Lincoln’s evolving rhetorical use of the document, culminating during his presidency as justification for fundamental change in the nation’s history.
Acknowledgements
Initially presented as “Lincoln’s Rubicon: The Congress’ 1854 Repeal of the Missouri Compromise” at the Conference, “A Firebell in the Past: The Missouri Crisis at 200,” Feb. 16, 2019, the University of Missouri, Columbia. The author thanks two anonymous reviewers for the journal and the journal editors, Matthew Mason (who heard the conference presentation) and Natalie Zacek, for helpful suggestions for revision.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes on contributor
Ronald Hatzenbuehler earned the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in history at Kent State University and taught at Idaho State University from 1972 until his retirement in 2013. His books include: (With Robert L. Ivie) Congress Declares War: Rhetoric, Leadership and Partisanship in the Early Republic (1983); ‘I Tremble for My Country’: Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia Gentry (2006, 2008); and Jefferson, Lincoln, and the Unfinished Work of the Nation (2016).
Notes
1 “Fragment on the Constitution and the Union,” [c. Jan. 1861], Collected Works, 4:160, 168–9; Morel, Lincoln and the American Founding. For similar references to the “apple of gold” metaphor, see Guelzo, Abraham Lincoln, 197 and, especially, Fornieri, Abraham Lincoln, 14.
2 Guelzo, Abraham Lincoln, 196; Carwardine, Lincoln, 14, 26; Lehrman, Lincoln at Peoria, 140; and Fornieri, Abraham Lincoln, 14, 17.
3 See Guelzo, Abraham Lincoln, 196; Foner, Fiery Trial, 70; and White, A. Lincoln, 201.
4 While it is true, as Lehrman notes, that no texts for Lincoln’s speeches before Peoria on October 16 exist, there is no indication in the newspaper reports of the speeches that Lincoln referred to the Declaration of Independence prior to his speech in Springfield on 4 October. Lehrman, Lincoln at Peoria, xiv.
5 “Speech at Bloomington, Illinois,” Sept. 12, 1854, Collected Works, 2:230–1.
6 “Eulogy to Henry Clay,” July 6, 1852, Collected Works, 2: 128–9. Lincoln subsequently qualified this recounting to acknowledge that Louisiana had been brought into the nation as a slave state because the French had instituted slavery there. See “Speech at Bloomington,” Sept. 12, 1854, Collected Works, 2:231.
7 “Speech at Bloomington, Illinois,” Sept. 12, 1854, Collected Works 2:231–2. Repeated in his “Speech at Peoria, Illinois,” Oct. 16, 1854, Collected Works, 2:270–1.
8 “Speech at Springfield, Illinois,” Oct. 4, 1854, Collected Works, 2:242–3. At Peoria on October 16, Lincoln resumed his recitation of Douglas’s praise for the Missouri Compromise not, he said, “to involve Judge Douglas in an inconsistency” but, instead, “merely to show the high estimate placed on the Missouri Compromise by all parties up to so late as the year 1849.” “Speech at Peoria, Illinois,” Oct. 16, 1854, Collected Works, 2:252.
9 “Speech at Bloomington, Illinois,” 233.
10 “Speech at Springfield, Illinois,” Oct. 4, 1854, Collected Works, 2:247. “Speech at Peoria, Illinois,” Oct. 16, 1854, Collected Works, 2:272.
11 “Speech at Springfield, Illinois,” Oct. 4, 1854, Collected Works, 2: 245–6.
12 “Speech at Peoria, Illinois,” Oct. 16, 1854, Collected Works, 2:266; 271; 275–6. Because of Lincoln’s more extended references to the Declaration at Peoria, Lehrman concludes that his 4 October “speech in Springfield – and perhaps even earlier versions given at Winchester and Bloomington – became known generally as the ‘Peoria speech’” and designates the Peoria speech as Lincoln’s “turning point.” I emphasize, however, important differences in the contents of these speeches and highlight the fact that Lincoln’s reliance on the statements of equality in the Declaration – despite passing references in Springfield and a fuller development in Peoria – primarily evolved after the summer of 1854. Perhaps nothing makes this point more clearly than the fact that despite quotations from the Declaration in the Peoria speech, Lincoln repeated his statement from Clay’s eulogy that the document was “the white man’s charter of freedom.” Lehrman, Lincoln at Peoria, xix; “Speech at Peoria, Illinois,” Oct. 16, 1854, Collected Works, 2:276.
13 “Address before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois,” Jan. 27, 1838, Collected Works, 1:112.
14 “Eulogy to Henry Clay,” July 6, 1852, Collected Works, 2:129–30.
15 Mayer, All on Fire, 64–7. “As the most forthright and extensive statement of American egalitarian principle written between the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address,” Mayer opines that “the Park Street Address deserves more recognition than it has received as a notable state paper (67).”
16 Mayer, All on Fire, 175–6. In Mayer’s words, “Garrison had sounded the call for a second American revolution – ‘to secure to the colored population of the United States all the rights and privileges which belong to them as men, and as Americans (176).’”
17 Garrison, “Address to the Slaves,” 169, 172, 176–8.
18 Harrold, Lincoln and the Abolitionists, 4–6, 34–5. Fornieri also emphasizes an important difference between Garrison and Lincoln, that while Garrison “repudiated the Constitution for its concessions to slavery, Lincoln saw the Declaration and the Constitution as complementary charters of freedom. The abstract principles of the Declaration were to be prudently actualized within the concrete legal framework of the Constitution.” Fornieri, “Lincoln’s Critique of Dred Scott,” 28.
19 Springfield Illinois Journal (July 11, 1854:2); Clay, Writings, 56; Howard, “Cassius M. Clay,” 50–4; and White, A. Lincoln, 195–6.
20 Lincoln, “Speech at Springfield, Illinois, June 16, 1857,” Collected Works, 2:404–7.
21 Lincoln, “Speech at Chicago, Illinois,” July 10, 1858, Collected Works, 2:501. Harrold makes the point that evangelical Christianity motivated abolitionists Codding, Eastman, and Lovejoy and that “all three of these men … encouraged Lincoln’s increased references to religion as he began to speak against the Kansas-Nebraska Act.” Harrold, Lincoln and the Abolitionists, 35. For other possible influences of evangelical religion on Lincoln, see Guelzo, Abraham Lincoln, 196.
22 One of Lincoln’s strongest statements concerning the idea of equal opportunity for all contained in the Declaration may be found in the “apple of gold” fragment that Basler and his staff date to January 1861, that the “principle of ‘Liberty to all’” was the “philosophical cause” underlying the Constitution and the union of the states. “[That] principle … clears the path for all – gives hope to all – and, by consequences, enterpri[s]e, and industry to all. The expression of that principle, in our Declaration of Independence, was most happy and fortunate. Without this … we could not, I think, have secured our free government, and consequent prosperity.” “Fragment on the Constitution and the Union,” [c. Jan. 1861], Collected Works, 4:168–9:160.
23 “Speech at Springfield, Illinois,” July 17, 1858, Collected Works, 2:519–20.
24 “Speech at Lewistown, Illinois, Aug. 17, 1858,” Collected Works, 2:546–7.
25 Lincoln based this appeal on the proposition that if slavery were allowed to expand nationwide – including into northern states that had abolished the institution – factory owners would replace wage-earning immigrants with slaves.
26 “First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas, at Ottawa, Illinois,” Aug. 21, 1858, Collected Works, 3:9, 16.
27 “Fifth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas, at Galesburg, Illinois,” Oct. 7, 1858, Collected Works, 3:220; repeated in the Seventh (and final) Debate at Alton, Illinois, Oct. 15, 1858, Collected Works, 3:303-5.
28 See especially Foner, Fiery Trial, 98–103.
29 Lincoln to Mark W. Delahay, May 14, 1859, Collected Works, 3:379. See also Lincoln to Theodore Canisius, May 17, 1859, Collected Works, 3:380; to Salmon P. Chase, June 9, 1859, 3:384 and June 20, 1859, 3:386; and to Nathan Sargent, June 23, 1859, 3:387–8.
30 Lincoln to Schuyler Colfax, July 6, 1859, Collected Works, 3:390–1. See also Lincoln to Samuel Galloway, July 28, 1859, 3:394–5.
31 “Speech at Columbus, Ohio,” Sept. 16, 1859, Collected Works, 3:423–5. See also “Speech at Indianapolis, Indiana,” Sept. 19, 1859, Collected Works, 3:469–70; “Speech at Leavenworth, Kansas,” Dec. 3, 1859, 3:500; and “Speech at New Haven, Connecticut,” Mar. 6, 1860; 4:19.
32 The reference to “self-evident lies” relates to a speech by Indiana Democratic Senator John Pettit supporting passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act when he refuted the “self-evident” truth in the Declaration that all men were created equal. See “Fragment: Notes for Speeches, [Oct. 1, 1858?],” Collected Works, 3:205 and “Seventh and Last Debate with Stephen A. Douglas,” Alton, Illinois, Oct. 15, 1858, 3:301–2. Southern apologists for slavery in the early 1830s, most notably South Carolinian John C. Calhoun, increasingly attacked the equality clause of the Declaration as “an utterly false view of the subordinate relation of the black to the white race.” More generally, Guelzo notes, “even before Jefferson’s death in 1826, the Declaration was slowly becoming an embarrassment to the Democratic party, especially in the South. As the South became more and more dependent on cotton agriculture, and as the Democratic party became more and more dependent on its Southern wing for leadership and finance, many Democrats began to give surprisingly short shrift to the Declaration.” Guelzo, Abraham Lincoln, 193–4 (Calhoun quote on 194). Phillip S. Paludan traces anti-Declaration sentiments to German-American political philosopher Francis Lieber and Southern social theorist George Fitzhugh, who believed that the statements of equality in the Declaration and the Virginia Declaration of Rights were abstractions “at war with all government, all subordination, all order.” Paludan, A Covenant with Death, esp. 77–78. For more on Fitzhugh’s views, see Fornieri, Abraham Lincoln, 33.
33 Lincoln to Henry L. Pierce and Others, Apr. 6, 1859, Collected Works, 3:375–6. See, previously, his speeches at Chicago on 10 July and Lewistown on 17 August, 1858 and his “Address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society,” Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Sept. 30, 1859, Collected Works, 3:481: “No community whose every member possesses [the art of “cultivated thought”] can ever be the victim of oppression in any of its forms. Such community will be alike independent of crowned-kings, money-kings, and land-kings [added emphasis; undoubtedly, a jab at Southern slaveholders].”
34 “Speech in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,” Feb. 23, 1861, Collected Works, 4:240–1. Two days prior to this speech in an address to the New Jersey Senate, Lincoln said, “I am exceedingly anxious that this Union, the Constitution, and the liberties of the people shall be perpetuated in accordance with the original idea for which that struggle was made, and I shall be most happy indeed if I shall be a humble instrument … for perpetuating the object of that great struggle.” “Address to the New Jersey Senate at Trenton, New Jersey,” Feb. 21, 1861, Collected Works, 4:236.
35 Lincoln to Horace Greeley, August 22, 1863, Collected Works, 5:388–9.
36 “Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg,” Nov. 19, 1863 [Final Text], Collected Works, 7:23. Garry Wills emphasizes that Lincoln focused on the Declaration’s statement of equality at Gettysburg in order to set the stage for amending the Constitution to institute “a new birth of freedom.” “Lincoln distinguished between the Declaration as the statement of a permanent ideal,” Wills writes, “and the Constitution as an early and provisional embodiment of that ideal, to be tested against it, kept in motion toward it.” Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg, 101. Fornieri and Guelzo criticize Wills for believing, in Fornieri’s words, that Lincoln “superimpos[ed] a radical understanding of equality upon the Constitution,” but White, Jr., Frank J. Williams, and Douglas L. Wilson are closer to Wills’ views. In White’s words, “Lincoln [came] to see the Civil War as a ritual of purification. To achieve the new freedom the old Union had to die.” Fornieri, “Lincoln’s Critique,” 28; Guelzo, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, 198; White, “Lincoln and the Rhetoric of Freedom,” 138; Williams, “The End of the Beginning,” 236.
37 Wilson, Lincoln’s Sword, 235.
38 “Response to a Serenade,” Feb. 1, 1865, Collected Works, 8:254–5. White, “Lincoln and the Rhetoric of Freedom,” 140–1.