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Lincoln

Original nameAbraham Lincoln

U.S. president, defender of abolition and the Union

Those Who Gave Power Back to the People · Revolution & Rights
United StatesCivil WarAbolitionThe Union

Who they are

The sixteenth president of the United States, who led the nation through its deepest rift — the Civil War. He fought to preserve the unity of the Union, and during the war signed the Emancipation Proclamation, raising the war into a moral struggle over freedom and equality. In his address at Gettysburg he restated the nation’s founding ideal: that a government "of the people, by the people, for the people" shall not perish from the earth. Soon after victory, with the Union preserved and the slaves freed, he was assassinated — becoming the most revered, and most lamented, of American presidents.

Primary sourcesThe Gettysburg AddressThe Emancipation Proclamation

Key stories

"Of the People, by the People, for the People"

In 1863, at Gettysburg where thousands of the fallen were buried, Lincoln gave a speech of just two minutes and some two hundred and seventy words. He did not vaunt the victory but redefined this brutal war as a test: whether a nation "conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal," can long endure. He pledged that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." This one line became the most distilled definition of democratic politics.

Relationships

Mentor
🕊️Jefferson　made the Declaration’s "all men are created equal" his life’s cause

Echoes today

Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.

"Of the people, by the people, for the people" as a definition of democracyLincoln’s "government of the people, by the people, for the people" became the most distilled definition of democratic politics, cited the world over — Sun Yat-sen’s "Three Principles" were directly inspired by it.

Appears in

The Widening of RightsLincoln: Of the People, by the People, for the People
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