EARLY IN THE secession winter of 1861, Abraham Lincoln drafted a short note musing about the “philosophical cause” of the “great prosperity” of the American union. The note is incomplete, but the president-elect’s message remains clear. As valuable as the Constitution and Union were, Lincoln observed, “the primary cause” of American prosperity lay elsewhere, in “the principle of ‘Liberty to all’—the principle that clears the path for all—gives hope to all—and, by consequence, enterprize, and industry to all.” The decisive assertion of that principle lay, Lincoln added, in the Declaration of Independence, the document which first promised the American people in 1776 “something better, than a mere change of masters.”
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