All honor to Jefferson—to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression (Basler, p. 489).
Thus, fundamental to Lincoln’s political lodestar – the Declaration of Independence – was his admiration for the Founders, but most particularly Thomas Jefferson and his doctrinal principles of liberty and equality based on natural law. It would be difficult indeed to separate Lincoln’s statesmanship from both the Declaration and Jefferson. They are welded together.
There are at least twenty references by Abraham Lincoln to Thomas Jefferson contained in the Roy P. Basler abridged compilation of his speeches and writings (Basler, Index, p. 833). This does not include other numerous references in Basler’s nine volume “Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln” published by Rutgers University Press, New Jersey, 1955. It is sufficient to say that Lincoln referred often in his speeches and writings to Jefferson, and also indirectly whenever he referenced the Declaration authored by him. To what extent was Lincoln’s interpretation of Jefferson correct? Jefferson can prove to be a complicated figure when it comes to historical analysis, particularly with respect to his actions and possible failures with respect to slavery. However, a basic review of his political principles reveals a man of strong convictions when it comes to the natural rights of all men.
So, what were Jefferson’s principles that comprise in Lincoln’s words, “the definitions and axioms of free society”? First and foremost is the language of the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable 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, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Jefferson said, “The Declaration of Independence... [is the] declaratory charter of our rights, and of the rights of man” (Jefferson to Samuel Adams Wells, 1819). This became political scripture to Lincoln.
In Lincoln’s personal meditation on Proverbs 25:11 (“A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver”) recorded around 1861, he wrote that the principle of the Declaration proclaiming “Liberty to all” were the words “fitly spoken” that has “proved an ‘apple of gold’ to us” (Basler, p. 513). The frame of silver, the Constitution, was “subsequently framed around it .. to adorn, and preserve it” (Basler, p. 513). This literary analogy expresses Lincoln’s consistent view of the raison d'être of the United States (Basler, p. 514). Near the end of his second term as President in 1809, Jefferson wrote concerning blacks, “whatever may be the degree of talent it is no measure of their rights,” since no man has a natural right “to be lord over other persons.” (Jefferson to Henri Gregoire, February 25, 1809). Like Jefferson, to Lincoln, “Liberty to all” meant all men – black, white, and every other color, culture, religion, and nationality.
In addition, Jefferson’s and the Declaration’s principle of the “consent of the governed” became a critical argument in Lincoln’s debates with Stephen A. Douglas over the spread of slavery to the territories and the concept of “popular sovereignty.” As Lincoln stated in his speech at Peoria, October 16, 1854, “No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent. I say this is the leading principle – the sheet anchor of American republicanism” (Basler, p. 304). Lincoln added that with respect to Douglas’ doctrine “popular sovereignty” in the territories is that: “it enables the first FEW, to deprive the succeeding MANY, of a free exercise of the right of self-government” resulting in an unjust twist on the principle of consent (Basler, p. 306).
Another of Jefferson’s principles from the Declaration is that our rights are divine, endowed on each person by our Creator, and not subject to human grants. Jefferson wrote in 1774, “The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.” (Rights of British America, 1774). To Lincoln, there was no doubt as to the heavenly connection between the rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” This belief was clearly reflected in his meditation of September 1862, when he wrote, “The will of God prevails” (Basler, p. 655), and in his Gettysburg Address, when he stated, “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom ” (Basler, p. 734). To Lincoln, God was the author of liberty and the ultimate governor of the republic. They both had faith in the hand of Providence.
With respect to education, Jefferson believed in the ability of all citizens to become educated with respect to their rights in order to maintain a free government. He had faith in the “common man” and his ability to elect wise and virtuous leaders if that man were educated to do so. As a Virginia legislator, Jefferson wrote the Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge, the Bill for Establishing a Public Library, and the Bill for Establishment of a System of Public Education, among others. Likewise, Lincoln believed that men should become educated, whether in public schools, or self-educated like himself. By so doing, they could advance in knowledge and skills to rise in society. In his address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, Milwaukee, September 30, 1859, Lincoln said, “A capacity, and taste, for [education and] reading, gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. It is the key, or one of the keys, to the already solved problems. And not only so. It gives a relish, and facility, for successfully pursuing the yet unsolved ones” (Basler, p. 503). He concludes that speech by saying something that could almost be credited to Jefferson:
Let us hope, rather, that by the best cultivation of the physical world, beneath and around us; and the intellectual and moral world within us, we shall secure an individual, social, and political prosperity and happiness, whose course shall be onward and upward, and which, while the earth endures, shall not pass away (Basler, p. 504).
Similarly, Jefferson wrote to Charles Willson Peale on August 20, 1811, “no occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth.” And writing later to William C. Jarvis in 1820, Jefferson stated his conviction that the people are sovereign and should be trusted when informed:
I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.
Lastly, of great significance are Lincoln’s and Jefferson’s views on slavery. Throughout his entire life Thomas Jefferson was a consistent opponent of slavery, calling it a “moral depravity” (Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, September 10, 1814) and a “hideous blot” (Jefferson to William Short, September 8, 1823). He also believed that slavery presented the greatest threat to the survival of the new American nation Jefferson to John Holmes, April 22, 1820). Jefferson also thought that slavery was contrary to the laws of nature, which decreed that all men had a right to personal liberty. He wrote this in his Notes on the State of Virginia, 1785:
Unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other … The statesman be loaded, who permitting one half of the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots, and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, and the amor patriae of the other.
And, near the end of his second term as President Jefferson wrote concerning blacks, “whatever may be the degree of talent it is no measure of their rights,” since no man has a natural right “to be lord over other persons” (Jefferson to Henri Gregoire, February 25, 1809). In this same vein, Lincoln abhorred slavery and believed in the natural rights of all men. In his Speech in Chicago July 10, 1858, he confirmed that he desired that slavery to be put on the ultimate course of extinction and stated that, “I have always hated slavery, I think as much as any Abolitionist” (Basler, p. 393). He continued by describing the language of the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” as the “electric cord … that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together” (Basler, p. 402). Later, in his debate with Douglas at Alton, October 15, 1858, Lincoln states the maxim of human equality set forth by Jefferson and the Founders:
They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should be familiar to all,—constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even, though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people, of all colors, everywhere.
Lincoln consistently and tirelessly voiced his opposition to slavery and to its spread in the growing nation. A year before his death, in a letter to Albert Hodges dated April 4, 1864, Lincoln wrote, “I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think, and feel.” In his First Inaugural Address delivered March 4, 1801, Jefferson refers to America as “the world's best hope.” Lincoln reflected this same belief in his 1862 message to Congress when he said that in saving the Union and by freeing the slaves, “We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth” (Basler, p. 688).
In summary, Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson were kindred spirits – in their love of liberty, of the equal rights of all men, and in their belief in popular government. A volume could be written on the many connections between these two great men and statesmen. They are both worthy of study and emulation of their shared ideologies of truth and liberty.
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