To fully understand Lincoln’s relationship with the Revolution we need to place him within its specific context. Though 1776 seems hazy and distant to us now, it was recent history when he was born in 1809. The Declaration of Independence was only 32 years old, and the Constitution was almost 20. Lincoln’s namesake grandfather had served as a captain in the colonial militia against the British, his father Thomas was born during the war, and both his mother Nancy and stepmother Sarah were born within 5 years of its end. The nation established by the Revolution was a radical experiment in self-government and the fire of liberty it ignited felt fresh to young Abraham’s generation.

Yet the Revolution’s legacy would also have seemed more fragile. Other democratic movements spurred by the same wave of classic liberalism had failed and would continue to do so through Lincoln’s lifetime. As a white man born in Kentucky, he reaped the full benefits of citizenship, but many others living within America’s borders lacked such freedoms and privileges, and they knew it. Lincoln repeatedly pointed to these inequalities in his writings and speeches, and worked to repair some of them, in no small part because he saw how they potentially endangered American democracy itself by embedding the seeds of despotism within its elaborate quilt.

Maintaining and furthering the Founders’ experiment in self-government was Lincoln’s life’s work. We hope you’ll enjoy our year-long exploration of these two quintessential American legacies.

Editor’s Note: This is the second installment of our monthly column commemorating America 250 by examining how the nation's founding generation shaped Abraham Lincoln.

Outside of the Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln’s most well-known quote on the American Revolution is probably his 1861 statement that “I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.” A survey of his writings and actions shows this was true. America’s founding document fundamentally shaped his ideology.

Lincoln’s particular focus was on the Declaration’s central premise “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.” He applied an expansive view to this statement, leading him to believe that the United States, including its Constitution, was innately anti-slavery. As Lincoln argued in an 1854 speech: “The theory of our government is Universal Freedom. ‘All men are created free and equal,’ says the Declaration of Independence. The word ‘Slavery’ is not found in the Constitution.”

In effect, Lincoln did not believe there was an implied “white” in the phrase “all men are created equal.” There are even instances suggesting he thought the Declaration’s use of “men” wasn’t strictly gendered. Defending himself against Stephen A. Douglas’s racist attacks during the 1858 debates, Lincoln stated: “I protest, now and forever, against that counterfeit logic which presumes that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave, I do necessarily want her for a wife. My understanding is that I need not have her for either, but as God made us separate, we can leave one another alone and do one another much good thereby.” In other words, Black women are just as entitled to “the pursuit of happiness” as white men.

Thus did the Declaration of Independence provide the root of Lincoln’s political thought. By the time of his death, this was becoming the dominant way of thinking about the document and remains so today.