OPINION:
Abraham Lincoln was born on this day, Feb. 12, in 1809. Although his birthday has never been recognized separately as an official federal holiday, it was widely celebrated in the past. It is still officially observed as a legal holiday in several states, including, unsurprisingly, Illinois.
Lincoln is acknowledged, along with George Washington and other presidents, on Presidents Day, the third Monday in February. Although we commonly refer to the holiday this Feb. 16 as Presidents Day, it’s still denominated by federal law as “Washington’s Birthday.”
Now, with this bit of calendric background in mind, let’s consider the preeminent role the Declaration of Independence played in shaping Lincoln’s political philosophy, especially as our nation commemorates the 250th anniversary of its 1776 signing.
With all due respect to Washington and other of our nation’s Founders, including, of course, Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration’s principal draftsman, I suggest that Lincoln deserves special recognition on his birthday this year as we celebrate the Declaration’s semiquincentennial anniversary.
Simply put, no other president has evidenced Abraham Lincoln’s deep understanding of the Declaration’s transcendent meaning to America’s still-ongoing experiment as a democratic republic. Certainly, no other president has been able to express that understanding so eloquently.
On Feb. 22, 1861, which happened to be Washington’s birthday, on his way to Washington to be inaugurated, Lincoln delivered what he told his audience was a “wholly unprepared speech” in Independence Hall. Whether prepared or not, Lincoln declared: “I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.”
No one then or now would find it easy to challenge his assertion.
By the time Lincoln was elected president in 1860, as a civil war loomed over the issue of slavery, his attachment to the intertwined “equality” and “consent” principles at the heart of the Declaration already was well known. As far back as his address in Peoria, Illinois, in October 1854, in response to the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Lincoln had made his attachment clear. (That measure voided the Missouri Compromise’s restriction on the extension of slavery.)
In Peoria, Lincoln grounded his argument against slavery firmly in the philosophy and principles expounded in the Founders’ Declaration of 1776, not in the Constitution of 1787. Referring to the Declaration repeatedly throughout his hourslong stemwinder, Lincoln recited for his audience verbatim the Declaration’s core: “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. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, DERIVING THEIR JUST POWERS FROM THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED.” (The italics and all capitals are in Lincoln’s original draft of the speech.)
In Peoria, Lincoln memorably called this inextricable binding together of inalienable equal rights and freely given consent, the Declaration’s self-evident truths, “the sheet anchor of American republicanism.” Then, at Gettysburg in November 1863, consecrating what would quickly become sacred ground, Lincoln began his famous address with this unforgettable invocation: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
Unless the mathematical calculation is ingrained in memory, it is easy to miss that Lincoln’s “four score and seven years” harks back to 1776, not 1787. That is back to the Declaration, not to the Constitution. For Lincoln, the Declaration expressed the foundational ideals embodying the new nation’s promise.
To be sure, acknowledge the contributions of Washington and whichever other presidents you wish on Presidents Day, but make a special effort to honor Lincoln on his Feb. 12 birthday.
Especially during this year of celebrating America’s 250th birthday, please take time to reflect on the way in which Lincoln repeatedly turned to the Declaration of Independence to explain the true meaning of the American democratic experiment.
• Randolph May is the president of the Free State Foundation, a free-market-oriented think tank in Potomac, Maryland.
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