How Did Lincoln Maintain and Advance Fundamental Principles of America's Founding Era?

Lincoln tried to revive and renew political principles that defined America at its birth in 1776. “Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it, the practices, and policy, which harmonize with it,” said Lincoln in an October 16, 1854, speech at Peoria, Illinois, against the spread of slavery to the western territories. In a speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia on February 22, 1861, he said, “I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.”

Lincoln’s understanding of American constitutionalism was based on principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence. He believed the Constitution was meant to fulfill the ideas of equality, liberty, and government by consent of the people in the 1776 founding document. In his actions as president and citizen, Lincoln attempted to preserve the founding political principles and to bring them more fully and justly into the lives of Americans. Thus, he began the process through which slavery was abolished in the United States.   >