Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln Essay Sample

📌Category: Government, Historical Figures, History, President of the United States
📌Words: 676
📌Pages: 3
📌Published: 18 June 2022

During the early years of America, when the Declaration of Independence was written, American society and common beliefs among the population were greatly different from what they are now. One line of the Declaration in particular has been fluidly interpreted since it was written. The general, modern perception of “all men are created equal” (Declaration 2) is greatly different from its original 1776 interpretation. A few men, in particular, Frederick Douglass, author of the autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, and Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth American President and author of The Gettysburg Address, both make every effort to shift their readers’ ideas surrounding the line.

The Declaration of Independence states that “[w]e hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” (Declaration 2). When the Declaration was written, in 1776, the aforementioned line applied only to a very few people; rich, white, land-owning men over the age of twenty-one, and meant that all men are created equal by God. However, as a society, America’s perspective on this quote has changed, and it is now believed that this line means that all humans were naturally created equal by whichever creator, or nature, one believes in. It is important for people of all ages to recognize this line and how its interpretation has changed over time because knowing that the Declaration declares that you, as an individual, are naturally equal to any other individual on the planet is very important for one's ability to empathize, stand up for oneself, and live in a positive mindset.

Frederick Douglass writes many times about his perception of equality and whether he is equal to many things in his surroundings or not. One very powerful piece of writing where this comparison is obvious is when Douglass compares himself to a ship sailing on the Chesapeake Bay. “My thoughts would compel utterance; and there, with no audience but the Almighty, I would pour out my soul's complaint, in my rude way, with an apostrophe to the moving multitude of ships:—You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my chains, and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before the bloody whip!” (10, 7-8). Douglass conveys, in this quote, that the phrase “all men are created equal” (Declaration 2) did not apply to slaves. He compares and contrasts his freedom to that of a ship on the bay, and ultimately shows that an inanimate object possesses more freedoms than himself, while it can be assumed that the entire slave population would concur with Douglass’ statement. This, finally, is one of Douglass’ attempts to change the reader’s perspectives on “all men [being] created equal” (Declaration 2) by gaining sympathy and using a powerful and pitiful comparison to do so.

At the time the Declaration was signed, slaves made up just over a fifth of the American population (Google), and with the knowledge that the slaves were excluded from The Declaration’s “all men are created equal” (2), readers can already see that over a fifth of the American population was not considered equal. The aforestated information emphasizes just how fundamentally imbalanced and flawed the birth of America, joined by racial slavery, was. 

President Abraham similarly stresses, in the Gettysburg Address, that “[America], under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth” (3). Lincoln, in this quote, is acknowledging how little of the population the original meaning of “all men are created equal” included. Lincoln intentionally tries to include everyone he can by using the term ‘people’, which evinces that he’s beginning to become more inclusive and use the word people to describe more than just rich, white men.

Both Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln used their influence and their voice to try to amend the Declaration’s original 1776 meaning of “all men are created equal” (2). Through either their writing or their speaking they called to light the injustices and flaws within the quote’s original meaning and began to morph readers’ perceptions and internal interpretations of the excerpt. It is of utmost importance for American citizens to recognize the fluidity of the famous line’s interpretation over time and recognize that today, they are naturally equal to any other human being.

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