American Enterprise Institute

Democracy and the American Revolution

Lincoln’s Declaration and the Coherence of Democracy Notes

  1. Abraham Lincoln, “Fragments on the Constitution and the Union,” Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, January 1861, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln4/1:264. 
  2. For an excellent and penetrating analysis of Abraham Lincoln’s commitment to majority rule, see James H. Read, Sovereign of a Free People: Abraham Lincoln, Majority Rule, and Slavery (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2023).
  3. Abraham Lincoln, “First Inaugural Address,” Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, March 4, 1861, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln4/1:389. 
  4. See Daniel McCarthy, “Willmoore Kendall: Forgotten Founder of Conservatism,” Imaginative Conservative, March 29, 2017, https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2017/03/willmoore-kendall-conservative-movement-daniel-mccarthy.html; and Glenn Ellmers, The Soul of Politics: Harry V. Jaffa and the Fight for America (New York: Encounter Books, 2021).
  5. Harry V. Jaffa, Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), xi.
  6. Abraham Lincoln, “‘A House Divided’: Speech at Springfield, Illinois,” Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, June 16, 1858, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln2/1:508. 
  7. Jaffa, Crisis of the House Divided, 281.
  8. Lincoln, “‘A House Divided.’”
  9. Willmoore Kendall and George W. Carey, The Basic Symbols of the American Political Tradition (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1995).
  10. Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics: An Introduction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).
  11. Eric Voegelin, The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin: Anamnesis, ed. David Walsh, trans. M. J. Hanak (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2002), 6:384.
  12. See, among other writings, John C. Calhoun, “A Discourse on the Constitution and the Government of the United States,” in Union and Liberty: The Political Philosophy of John C. Calhoun, ed. Ross M. Lence (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1992), 132.
  13. John Locke, Second Treatise of Government (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1980).
  14. Locke, Second Treatise of Government, para. 95.
  15. Locke, Second Treatise of Government, para. 96.
  16. James Madison, “Speech Introducing Proposed Constitutional Amendments,” in The American Republic: Primary Sources, ed. Bruce Frohnen (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2002).
  17. Locke, Second Treatise of Government, para. 20.
  18. Abraham Lincoln, “Speech in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,” Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, February 22, 1861, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln4/1:376. 
  19. Abraham Lincoln, “Speech at Chicago, Illinois,” July 10, 1858, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln2/1:526. 
  20. Abraham Lincoln, “First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois,” Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, August 21, 1858, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln3/1:1. 
  21. Abraham Lincoln, “To Joshua Speed,” Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, August 24, 1855, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln2/320. 
  22. Abraham Lincoln, “To Henry L. Pierce and Others,” Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, April 6, 1859, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln3/1:98. 
  23. Abraham Lincoln, “Speech at Lewistown, Illinois,” Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, August 17, 1858, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln2/1:567. 
  24. Abraham Lincoln, “Speech at Philadelphia,” Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, February 1, 1861, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln3/1:90. 
  25. Abraham Lincoln, “Speech at Peoria, Illinois,” Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, October 16, 1854, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln2/1:282. 
  26. On Lincoln’s commitment to prudence, see Greg Weiner, Old Whigs: Burke, Lincoln, and the Politics of Prudence (New York: Encounter Books, 2019).
  27. Abraham Lincoln, “To John C. Fremont,” Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, September 2, 1861, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln4/1:929. John C. Frémont replied in moralistic terms, requesting that Lincoln make his order countermanding Frémont’s explicit. Lincoln did so on September 8, 1861, again citing the illegality of Frémont’s proclamation.
  28. Noah Feldman, The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery and the Refounding of America (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021). For a defense of Lincoln’s spirit of compromise, see Greg Weiner, “Lincoln and the Moral Dimension of Compromise,” American Political Thought 11, no. 2 (Spring 2022): 253–63, https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/719356. 
  29. Abraham Lincoln, “Speech at Chicago, Illinois,” Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, March 1, 1859, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln3/1:90. 
  30. Abraham Lincoln, “Speech at Edwardsville, Illinois,” Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, September 11, 1858, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln3/1:13. 
  31. Abraham Lincoln, “Response to a Serenade,” Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, October 19, 1864, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln8/1:128. 
  32. Lincoln, “Fragments on the Constitution and the Union.”