At two o’clock in the afternoon on August 17, 1858, Abraham Lincoln rose to address a crowd gathered at the Fulton County Courthouse in Lewistown, Illinois. He came to answer Senator Stephen Douglas, who had given a speech in Lewistown the day before. According to newspaper reports, Lincoln spoke for two and a half hours and had more listeners at the end of his remarks than when he began. The speech he delivered was not simply part of a campaign to challenge Douglas for the U.S. Senate seat. It was an act of recovery—an effort to recall the meaning of the American Founding at a moment when its principles were contested and under strain.

Lincoln spoke on that occasion of the evil of slavery existing in the American colonies when the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence in 1776. “These communities, by their representatives in Old Independence Hall,” he recounted,

said to the whole world of men: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: 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.” This was their majestic interpretation of the economy of the Universe. This was their lofty, and wise, and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to His creatures. Yes, gentlemen, to all His