Definition of Democracy, [1 August 1858?]1
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–2
1Abraham Lincoln wrote this unsigned and undated document. At the time that Roy P. Basler, editor
of the Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, published this document from a facsimile of the original manuscript, an evidently
unrelated clipped signature of Lincoln’s had been affixed to the facsimile. Basler
stated that the date of composition of August 1, 1858, which has historically been
assigned to this document was “apparently pure conjecture”. The editors have retained
this date in the absence of any evidence to the contrary. A date of August 1, 1858,
would situate the composition of this manuscript during the election campaign of 1858, on the day following Lincoln’s letter to Stephen A. Douglas accepting the latter’s terms for a series of debates in their race for the U.S. Senate. The manuscript was reportedly given by Mary Lincoln to attorney Myra Bradwell, who along with her husband James B. Bradwell helped to
secure Mary Lincoln’s release from an institution in 1874. The text of the manuscript
was reprinted widely in newspapers from at least 1895 onwards. One newspaper version
published in 1906, apparently in consultation with James B. Bradwell, states that
“Lincoln is believed to have penned it as a note for oratorical use while he was campaigning
against Stephen A. Douglas.” As the text began to be included in collections of Lincoln’s
writings in the early twentieth century, 1858 was given as the year of composition,
with August 1 conjectured as a possible day, presumably based on an assumption that
the document relates to the Lincoln-Douglas Debates.
Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 2:532; Illinois State Journal and Register (Springfield), 14 February 1943, 19:5; Jean H. Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987), 338-41; The Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY), 15 September 1895, 8:4-5; The Evening Times-Republican (Marshalltown, IA), 26 February 1906, 4:6; Arthur Brooks Lapsley, ed., The Writings of Abraham Lincoln (New York: P. F. Collier & Son, [ca. 1905-1906]), 7:389; Harry W. Hastings and Harold
W. Thompson, eds., Selections from the Works of Abraham Lincoln (New York: F. M. Ambrose, 1921), 58; The Broadax (Chicago, IL), 23 October 1915, 4:2; The Battle Creek Enquirer and the Evening News (MI), 26 February 1929, 1:6, 2:6.
2Neither Basler nor the editors have found evidence of Lincoln including this text
in any of his speeches or other writings. During debate in the U.S. Senate over the
Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1869, Republican senator from Kansas Samuel C. Pomeroy voiced a sentiment which echoed portions of Lincoln’s without attributing a source.
Pomeroy stated that “As I would not be a slave, so would I not make a slave; and the
man who would do or be either under our form of government does not merit the condition
of a freeman”, suggesting that this text may have circulated in some form prior to
its extensive publication beginning later in the nineteenth century.
Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 2:532; Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 10 February 1955, 3:1-2; Cong. Globe, 40th Cong., 3rd Sess., 710 (1869); Biographical Directory of the American Congress 1774-1996
(Alexandria, VA: CQ Staff Directories, 1997), 1675.
Handwritten Document, 1 page(s), Lincoln Collection, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum (Springfield, IL).