Why do you think Abraham Lincoln more often used the Declaration of Independence rather than the Constitution?

Answer 1

Lincoln understood the Declaration of Independence to have the priority -- to be a statement of PRINCIPLE that the Constitution then sought to put into effect as much as circumstances would allow. He DID argue from the Constitution, but for rhetorical purposes and to summarize 'first principles' the Declaration was much more useful.

The main thing Lincoln quoted from the Declaration was the expression "all men are created equal. . . ." His writings make it clear that from at least 1854, after the Kansas-Nebraska bill, he started applying this line to argue for the position (that of the emerging Republican party) that slavery was an evil to be contained, not expanded.

One example of his view of these two documents and how each functioned:

"I believe the declaration that 'all men are created equal' is the great fundamental principle upon which our free institutions rest; that ***** slavery is violative of that principle; but that, by our frame of government, that principle has not been made one of legal obligation; that by our frame of government, States which have slavery are to retain it, or surrender it at their own pleasure; and that all others--individuals, free States and national Government--are constitutionally bound to leave them alone about it."
--letter to Hon. J.J. Brown, Oct 18, 1858

And in a famous quote from the Lincoln-Doulas debates of that year --

"I hold that nothwitstanding all this [the current racial inequalities], there is no reason in the world why the ***** is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. . . In the right to eat the bread, without leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of any living man."


Lincoln more and more saw the Civil War as about this question -- as he stated in his Gettysburg address this war was a test of whether a nation "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that 'all men are created equal' . . . can long endure."

In fact, he made the same point in a speech on July 7 of that year (just after the battle at Gettysburg), thus:

"on this last Fourth of July just passed, when we have a gigantic rebellion, at the bottom of which is an effort to overthrow the principle that all men were created equal, we have the surrender of a most powerful position and army on that very day"


Many scholars have written about the foundational role this premisse of the Declaration played in Lincoln's thinking, esp. about the main national issue of the 1850s-60s. For instance, Lincoln scholar Harry Jaffa in *New Birth of Freedom* writes "Lincoln did not appeal to the Declaration of Independence merely because it was our first and foremost founding document. It was, he said, the immortal emblem of man's humanity and the father of all moral principle because it incorporated a rational, nonarbitrary moral and political standard."

For the observations of a number of Lincoln scholars on Lincoln's relationship to the thought of the founding fathers, and esp. to the Declaration of Independence, see the following:
http://www.mrlincolnandthefounders.org/inside.asp?ID=1&subjectID=1
http://www.mrlincolnandthefounders.org/inside.asp?ID=6&subjectID=4

(Another key example of Lincoln arguing about the work of the founding fathers --esp. concerning their view of the expansion or containment and eventual end of slavery-- is found in his "Cooper Union address", the speech that introduced him to East Coast Republicans and so launched his bid for the nomination in 1860. The first part of this speech argues that, according to their votes and statements, twenty-one of the thirty-nine signers of the Constitution were on record that the Federal Government could prohibit slavery in the national territories.
http://members.aol.com/jfepperson/cooper.html

Some have said that in the antebellum period the Declaration began to become to a number of leading American (not just Lincoln) a sort of secular Scripture. (This development is discussed in some detail in the final chapter of Paula Maier's book *American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence* --which includes an excellent discussion of how the Declaration came to be written, the traditions it drew on, etc.)

Answer 2

Abraham Lincoln was a President in a fresh democracy, a democracy whose principles were arguably first born and stated in the declaration of independence. The constitution is a document filled with laws for running a country that insinuate the ethics of that country, whereas the declaration of independence was a list of the ethical and moral obligations that the US was built upon. While President Lincoln was in office the United States was still trying to determine its identity and as the figure head of a country he was more likely to inspire with the framework of the country as opposed to the laws that guide it.

Answer 3

Because Constitutionally the South might have been acting more Constitutionally than Lincoln. Lincoln was assuming power that the Constitution did not really give him. The irony of it is that the author of the Declaration of Independence was from a southern state and had slaves, and also believed that rebellion and civil wars were good every twenty years or so.

Answer 4

Because the Declaration of Independence was about being free and fighting for what you believe in, the Constituion is mostly framework for how the country works. The Declaration was much more appropiate for the time and circumstance; the issue of slavery and a nation at war.

Answer 5

Used it for what? You mean quoted it more often. The Declaration has a more poetic and inspiring tone to it than the Constitution, so it lends itself better to inspirational kinds of speeches. Most of the Constitution is very dry.

Answer 6

probably because the Declaration of Independence symbolized freedom and he stood for alot of that in his stance against slavery. The Constitution discusses freedom but the entire essence of the Declaration of Independence is freedom.

Answer 7

I agree with brewbeer. Also, the Declaration's style is more inspirational that the Constitution, which is relatively mechanical. His biggest challenges, and his personal style, were to inspire.

Answer 8

They have different ideas.