Racist interpretations of “the American Creed” prevailed until Honest Abe.
Talmage Boston April 18, 2026
Abraham Lincoln, played by Oliver Seale, read an abbreviated version of the Declaration of Independence to a crowd at Old City Park in 1995. The park was having its annual Old-Fashioned Independence Day.
With the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence less than three months away, most people recognize that Thomas Jefferson’s words in the second paragraph of that document, known as “the American Creed,” are its most important part.
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.
Beginning in the 1850s, a political debate over what the creed meant split the country apart as people argued over the future of slavery in America. Democratic Party leader Stephen Douglas claimed that the founding fathers believed the words should be interpreted “Only white men are created equal,” and thus they were not intended to include African-Americans.
His position aligned with the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision, issued in 1857, in which a 7-2 majority of the justices (who came from Southern states) held that under the Constitution, African-Americans were only property, not citizens, and thus they were not protected by the doctrine of human equality contained in the declaration’s creed.
Abraham Lincoln, a leader of the newly formed Republican Party, believed that the founders meant what they said in the creed — that all men are created equal and have the same unalienable rights. Esteemed Lincoln historian Lewis Lehrman concluded that because of that belief, Lincoln made the declaration “the bedrock on which he built his philosophical and political reasoning,” and Oxford professor Adam I.P. Smith said that it “became the mission statement for his mission” to end slavery in America.
In the context of the national argument over the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, and the issue of whether slavery should be permitted to expand into America’s western territories, the conflicting interpretations of the creed came to a head in 1858, when Lincoln ran against the incumbent Douglas (the act’s leading proponent) for his seat in the U.S. Senate from Illinois. In their hard-fought campaign, they held debates in seven Illinois towns.
Lincoln already had his eyes on a run for the presidency, so he made sure the debates were transcribed, published and circulated throughout the country. Though Douglas won the 1858 election, the debates turned Lincoln into a national political figure and triggered his rise toward being elected president in November 1860.
Douglas’ and the Supreme Court’s racist interpretation of the declaration’s creed was accepted as truth by many well into the early 1860s, and it caused the import of Thomas Jefferson’s masterpiece to spiral into decline. Lincoln fought to regain its stature by saying Douglas’ claim that the creed only applied to white men “took out the Declaration’s moral lights,” “eradicated its love of liberty,” and that if Douglas’ interpretation was correct, then the Fourth of July had become a meaningless holiday, “only good for burning firecrackers.”
Lincoln became evangelistic about his egalitarian interpretation of the declaration, and his eloquent power to persuade the nation that his was the correct reading changed the minds of many and resurrected the creed back to its earlier respected position.
Lincoln argued that the creed needed to return to its position of primacy because it was “the immortal emblem of humanity,” it contained “sacred principles,” it was the “sheet anchor” of American republicanism, and it was the “electric cord” that linked the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together.
Citing Chapter 25 of Proverbs, Lincoln said that as between the declaration and the Constitution (which permitted slavery), the declaration was “the apple of gold,” whereas the Constitution was merely a silver picture frame around the apple. He expanded the creed’s importance beyond America’s borders with his statement that the declaration “not only gave liberty to people in this country — it gave hope to the entire world for all future time.”
As a careful lawyer, before making his debate arguments and speeches, Lincoln thoroughly researched every bit of history that existed about our founders, reviewing everything they had said in their public remarks and how they had voted, in order to establish that the historical record proved that the intention of the majority of them on what the creed meant at the time they signed the declaration absolutely mirrored the document’s words.
Lincoln knew that although he was the declaration’s strongest advocate, it was not the supreme law of the land; only the Constitution, adopted 11 years after the declaration, achieved that legal effect. So, as president and commander-in-chief while the Civil War continued into its second year, Lincoln decided he needed to put teeth into the declaration, turning its words into law, to give the Union war effort a new sense of purpose.
He started by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, effective Jan. 1, 1863, a date that proved to be the midpoint of the Civil War. In the proclamation, Lincoln said he had the power to emancipate all slaves in the Confederate states because the Constitution authorized the commander-in-chief to take otherwise unconstitutional actions in the event of “military necessity.”
Because the Union Army was on the verge of losing the Civil War in late 1862, there was indeed a military necessity to increase Union troop strength, which could be done by bringing runaway or emancipated slaves into its army, thereby putting Northern troops in a better position to turn things around and defeat the Confederates.
Ten and a half months after the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln elevated the creed to new heights with his Gettysburg Address, delivered Nov. 19, 1863, which started with the immortal words: “Four score and seven years ago [in 1776, when the declaration was signed] our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
He ended it with: “We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
What Lincoln meant with his closing words was that although the declaration gave America its first birth of freedom from England, the nation now needed something more: a second birth of freedom that would provide equal protection for the unalienable rights of all Americans so it could be clear, once and for all, that our founders meant what they said when they signed off on the creed.
Editorials and commentary from op-ed columnists, the editorial board and contributing writers.
On Jan. 31, 1865, Lincoln succeeded in getting Congress to pass the 13th Amendment to the Constitution that abolished slavery in America, meaning the American Creed finally became grafted into the supreme law of the land, and Lincoln had prevailed in bringing a new birth of freedom to our nation.
That equality was the central idea expressed in the Declaration of Independence that accelerated Abraham Lincoln’s rise to the nation’s highest office. And it was Lincoln who stopped the creed’s fall from grace and elevated it into becoming permanent enforceable law.
Thus, the story and power of the Declaration of Independence, and the story and power of Abraham Lincoln, and how they helped each other rise to their highest possible levels, is the feel-good and true story of a perfectly balanced symbiotic relationship between two of the greatest forces that have shaped our nation’s 250-year history.
