{"id":1005,"date":"2013-06-29T12:31:04","date_gmt":"2013-06-29T12:31:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/?p=1005"},"modified":"2016-06-18T20:27:08","modified_gmt":"2016-06-18T20:27:08","slug":"definition-of-democracy-august-1-1858","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/definition-of-democracy-august-1-1858\/","title":{"rendered":"Definition of Democracy (August 1, 1858)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Contributing Editors for this page include Canada Snyder<\/em><\/p>\n

Ranking<\/strong><\/h3>\n

#81<\/span> on the list of 150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents<\/em><\/p>\n

Annotated Transcript<\/h3>\n

“As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.”<\/a><\/p>\n

On This Date<\/h3>\n

[Editorial Note: \u00a0This undated fragment has traditionally been identified from the period in August 1858]<\/em><\/p>\n

HD Daily Report, August 1, 1858<\/a><\/p>\n

The Lincoln Log, August, 1858<\/a><\/p>\n

Close Readings<\/h3>\n

Canada Snyder, “Understanding Lincoln” blog post (via Quora), October 2, 2013\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Custom Map<\/h3>\n

\"Screen<\/a>
\nView in Larger Map<\/a><\/p>\n

How Historians Interpret<\/h3>\n

\u201cAt Gettysburg, Lincoln connected democracy\u2019s preservation with \u2018a new birth of freedom,\u2019 and on one earlier occasion, Lincoln appears to have defined the word \u2018democracy\u2019 in direct opposition to slavery. The provenance of the tantalizing document is questionable, as is the date, although the editors of his collected work conjectured that he wrote it on August 1, 1858. \u2018As I would not be a slave<\/em>, so I would not be a master<\/em>, the scrap of paper reads, apparently in Lincoln\u2019s handwriting. \u2018This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.\u2019 If Lincoln indeed wrote these words, he understood the meaning of democracy to embrace legal and social relations between humans as well as a political system: a democratic polity could never tolerate the essentially undemocratic condition of masters and slaves. By this definition, the slave South was no democracy. And by this definition, the crisis of democracy predated Southern secession.\u201d<\/p>\n

–Sean Wilentz, \u201cDemocracy at Gettysburg,\u201d in The Gettysburg Address: Perspectives on Lincoln\u2019s Greatest Speech<\/i> <\/a>ed. Sean Conant (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 53-54.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cAnd yet Lincoln\u2019s definition of democracy in terms of slavery, however questionable as political science, cut to the heart of his thinking. It was certainly more than a mere political device; indeed he never appears to have used it in public. It becomes fully meaningful only if one recognizes that after 1854 slavery became the most direct antithesis of the American Dream I his thought, the diametrical opposite of the central idea of the Republic. If his definition of democracy is restated as follows, it still remains questionable political theory, but it will express his meaning in more accurate terms: As I would not want my chance to rise in life <\/em>obstructed, so I would not want to obstruct the chance of others to rise. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

–G.S. Boritt, Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream<\/a> <\/em>(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 276.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“Although Andrew Jackson had said, ‘Never for a moment believe that the great body of the citizens … can deliberately intend to do wrong,’ Lincoln was dubious. His view of ‘the people’ consistently was cast within discussions of government, laws, the need for restraint. He was so little committed to Jackson’s shibboleth that although he analyzed other political concepts at length, he gave posterity a thirty-three-word<\/em>\u00a0definition of democracy. Lincoln was no democrat as the word was understood in his century. It is not surprising then that he left the Democratic party his father had supported and joined the Whigs.”<\/p>\n

–Phillip S. Paludan, \u201cLincoln\u2019s Prewar Constitutional Vision,\u201d<\/a> Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association <\/em>15, no. 2 (1994): 1-21.<\/p>\n

NOTE TO READERS<\/h3>\n

This page is under construction and will be developed further by students in the new \u201cUnderstanding Lincoln\u201d online course sponsored by the House Divided Project at Dickinson College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. To find out more about the course and to see some of our videotaped class sessions, including virtual field trips to Ford’s Theatre and Gettysburg, please visit our Livestream page at http:\/\/new.livestream.com\/gilderlehrman\/lincoln<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Searchable Text<\/span><\/h3>\n
As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.<\/span><\/div>\n
A. LINCOLN<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Contributing Editors for this page include Canada Snyder Ranking #81 on the list of 150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents Annotated Transcript “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.” On […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10856],"tags":[10866,11625,10864,11648,10865,70,10876],"class_list":["post-1005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-honest-abe","tag-antebellum","tag-nationalism","tag-notes","tag-populism","tag-private","tag-slavery","tag-younger-readers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1005"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4343,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1005\/revisions\/4343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}