American Enterprise Institute

Slavery, Equality, and the American Revolution

Lincoln’s Battle for the Founders’ Declaration Notes

  1. Abraham Lincoln, “Speech at a Republican Banquet, Chicago, Illinois,” December 10, 1856, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, vol. 2, 1848–1858 (Rutgers University Press, 1953), 385.
  2. Abraham Lincoln, “Speech at Springfield, Illinois,” July 17, 1858, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 2:50. He observed,
    • We had gone through our struggle and secured our own independence. The framers of the Constitution found the institution of slavery amongst their other institutions at the time. They found that by an effort to eradicate it, they might lose much of what they had already gained. They were obliged to bow to the necessity.
  3. Abraham Lincoln, “Address at Cooper Institute, New York City,” February 27, 1860, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 3, 1858–1860, 535. Lincoln said of the Founding Fathers, “As those fathers marked it, so let it be again marked, as an evil not to be extended, but to be tolerated and protected only because of and so far as its actual presence among us makes that toleration and protection a necessity.”
  4. Abraham Lincoln to George Robertson, August 15, 1855, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 2:318. Lincoln lamented, “That spirit which desired the peaceful extinction of slavery, has itself become extinct, with the occasion, and the men of the Revolution.”
  5. Abraham Lincoln, “Speech at Chicago, Illinois,” July 10, 1858, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 2:501.
  6. Lincoln, “Speech at Chicago, Illinois,” 2:488–89, 499–500.
  7. The New York Times, “Mr. Douglas in His Native State—His Speech at Burlington, Vt.,” August 2, 1860, https://www.nytimes.com/1860/08/02/archives/mr-douglas-in-his-native-state-his-speech-at-burlington-vt.html.
  8. Stephen A. Douglas, “First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois,” August 21, 1858,  in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 3:8, 12.
  9. Stephen A. Douglas, “Speech of Stephen A. Douglas: Chicago, July 9, 1858,” in The Lincoln–Douglas Debates of 1858, ed. Robert W. Johannsen (Oxford University Press, 1965), 29.
  10. Douglas, “Speech of Stephen A. Douglas,” in Johannsen, The Lincoln–Douglas Debates of 1858, 30.
  11. John C. Breckinridge, “Speech of Mr. Breckinridge at Frankfort,” The New York Times, July 25, 1860, https://www.nytimes.com/1860/07/25/archives/politics-in-kentucky-speech-of-mr-breckinridge-at-frankfort-mr.html.
  12. John C. Breckinridge, “Speech of Hon. John C. Breckinridge [. . .]” (Washington, DC, 1860), 6, https://archive.org/details/speechofhonjohnc00brec/page/n1/mode/2up.
  13. University of California, Santa Barbara, American Presidency Project, “Democratic Party Platform (Breckinridge Faction) of 1860,” https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/democratic-party-platform-breckinridge-faction-1860.
  14. Breckinridge, “Speech of Hon. John C. Breckinridge [. . .],” 8.
  15. Breckinridge, “Speech of Hon. John C. Breckinridge [. . .],” 15.
  16. Confederate Const. of 1861, art. I, § 9, cl. 4.
  17.  J. H. Thornwell, Our Danger and Our Duty (Southern Guardian Steam-Power Press, 1862), 5, https://docsouth.unc.edu/imls/thornwell/thornwel.html.
  18. Lincoln, “Address at Cooper Institute,” 4:535, 550.
  19. Abraham Lincoln, “Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg,” November 19, 1863, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 7, 1863–1864, 23.
  20. Lincoln, “Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg.”
  21. Lincoln, “Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg.”
  22. Abraham Lincoln, “Address to the New Jersey Senate at Trenton, New Jersey,” February 21, 1861, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 4, 1860–1861, 236.
  23. Lincoln, “Address to the New Jersey Senate at Trenton, New Jersey.”
  24. Abraham Lincoln, “Speech at New Haven, Connecticut,” March 6, 1860, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 4:18.
  25. Abraham Lincoln, “Speech at Hartford, Connecticut,” March 5, 1860, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 4:5.
  26. Abraham Lincoln, “Speech at Peoria, Illinois,” October 16, 1854, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 2:255.
  27. Lincoln, “Speech at Peoria, Illinois,” 2:276.
  28. Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 US 393, 410 (1857).
  29. Stephen A. Douglas, “Fifth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas, at Galesburg, Illinois,” October 7, 1858, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 3:216.
  30. Stephen A. Douglas, “Speech Delivered at Springfield, Ill. by Senator S. A. Douglas,” July 17, 1858, Northern Illinois University Digital Library, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/msu.31293023047990?urlappend=%3Bseq=213%3Bownerid=13510798902616451-217.
  31. Douglas, “Speech at Springfield, Illinois.”
  32. Ill. Const. of 1848, art. VI, § 1; and Ill. Const. of 1848, art. VIII, § 1.
  33. Rodney O. Davis and Douglas L. Wilson, ed., The Lincoln–Douglas Debates (University of Illinois Press, 2008), 325–26.
  34. Office of the Illinois Secretary of State, “Illinois Black Law (1853),” 100 Most Valuable Documents at the Illinois State Archives, https://www.ilsos.gov/departments/archives/online_exhibits/100_documents/1853-black-law.html.
  35. Douglas, “First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois,” 3:4; Stephen A. Douglas, “Second Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Freeport, Illinois,” August 27, 1858, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 3:56; Stephen A. Douglas, “Third Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Jonesboro, Illinois,” September 15, 1858, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 3:106; Stephen A. Douglas, “Fourth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Charleston, Illinois,” September 18, 1858, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 3:176; Douglas, “Fifth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas, at Galesburg, Illinois,” 3:215; Stephen A. Douglas, “Sixth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas, at Quincy, Illinois,” October 13, 1858, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 3:261; and Stephen A. Douglas, “Seventh and Last Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Alton, Illinois,” October 15, 1858, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 3:296.
  36. Abraham Lincoln, “Speech at Springfield, Illinois,” June 26, 1857, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 2:406.
  37. US Const. pmbl.
  38. Lincoln, “Speech at Springfield, Illinois,” June 26, 1857, 2:405.
  39. See Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, rev. ed. (Basic Books, 2009).
  40. Lincoln, “Speech at Springfield, Illinois,” June 26, 1857, 2:406.
  41. Abraham Lincoln, “‘A House Divided’: Speech at Springfield, Illinois,” June 16, 1858, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 2:467.
  42. Douglas, “Fifth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas, at Galesburg, Illinois,” 3:216.
  43. Robert W. Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas (Oxford University Press, 1973), 816–17; and S. 52, 36th Cong. art. 14, § 1 (1860).
  44. “Nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” US Const. amend. XIV, § 1.
  45. Abraham Lincoln to Henry L. Pierce and Others, April 6, 1859, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 3:375.
  46. Lincoln to Pierce and Others, 3:375–76.
  47. Lincoln to Pierce and Others, 3:376. Compare Thomas Jefferson, “Manners,” query 18 in Notes on the State of Virginia, in The Portable Thomas Jefferson, ed. Merrill D. Peterson (Penguin Books, 1975), 215.
    • And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever.
  48. Lincoln to Pierce and Others.
  49. Alexander H. Stephens, quoted in Abraham Lincoln to Alexander H. Stephens, December 22, 1860, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 4:161n1.
  50. Abraham Lincoln, “Fragment on the Constitution and the Union,” ca. January 1861, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 4:168.
  51. Lincoln, “Fragment on the Constitution and the Union,” 4:169.
  52. Confederate Const., art. I, § 9, cl. 4. As president, Lincoln never conceded a right of any American state to separate from the federal union under a constitutional or legal principle of “secession,” calling it a “sophism” and “rebellion thus sugar-coated.” See Abraham Lincoln, “Message to Congress in Special Session,” July 4, 1861, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 4:433. In his most pointed criticism of the alleged right to secession, Lincoln described it as “the essence of anarchy” at his first inauguration as president. See Abraham Lincoln, “First Inaugural Address—Final Text,” March 4, 1861, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 4:268.
  53. Alexander H. Stephens, “Cornerstone Speech,” speech, Savannah, GA, March 21, 1861, American Battlefield Trust, https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornerstone-speech.
  54. Stephens, “Cornerstone Speech.”
  55. Stephens, “Cornerstone Speech.”
  56. Lincoln, “Speech at Peoria, Illinois,” 2:266.
  57. Abraham Lincoln to Albert G. Hodges, April 4, 1864, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 7:281.
  58. Abraham Lincoln to Horace Greeley, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 5, 1861–1862, 388–89.
  59. Abraham Lincoln, “Emancipation Proclamation,” January 1, 1863, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 6, 1862–63, 29.
  60. Lincoln, “Emancipation Proclamation.”
  61. Frederick Douglass to Samuel J. May, January 28, 1863, in Measuring the Man: The Writings of Frederick Douglass on Abraham Lincoln, ed. Lucas E. Morel and Jonathan W. White (Reedy Press, 2025), 82.
  62. Lincoln, “Emancipation Proclamation,” 6:30.
  63. Lincoln to Pierce and Others, 3:376.
  64. Lincoln, “Speech at Hartford, Connecticut,” 4:3.