NARA - National Archives and Records Administration

04/22/2025 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 04/22/2025 14:01

The Declaration, Lincoln, and Hoover

Stone Plate Engraving of the Declaration of Independence,
National Archives and Records Administration

By Thomas F. Schwartz

"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 aspirational statement at the founding of independence was remarkable for several reasons. Rights typically were granted to individuals by the Church, Monarchs, or government through law. The Declaration of Independence grounds rights as given by the Creator so that every individual is born equally into the state of nature. Individuals have the right to their "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Because these rights are beyond the power of humans and their systems of governance, they cannot be terminated except by violating one's natural rights. Some have argued that "the pursuit of happiness" was a substitute for John Locke's similar sentiments that used "property" instead of happiness. Others have understood it to mean "equality of opportunity" where anyone has the right to rise according to their abilities and ambitions.

Abraham Lincoln used this section of the Declaration to remind Americans that enslaved blacks were entitled to at least the right to keep the fruits of their own labor. Very few Americans in the 1850s were willing to extend social and political equality to blacks. But there was a growing opposition to slave labor which remained a common feature in the Southern states. The hope of peacefully ending slavery by preventing its further expansion into the territories resulted in a bloody civil war. The passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments ended slavery, provided former enslaved individuals citizenship, and allowed black men the right to vote. Southern states found ways to abridge these rights, fomenting the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and corrective legislation such as the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965).

Hoover admired Abraham Lincoln and embraced the natural rights philosophy expressed in the Declaration of Independence. Every life was born free and equal in the state of nature and Hoover believed one needed to be allowed to develop, unimpeded, to their fullest potential. Hoover summarized his thinking this way: "Our individualism differs from all others because it embraces these great ideals: that while we build our society upon the attainment of the individual, we shall safeguard to every individual an equality of opportunity to take that position in the community to which his intelligence, character, ability and ambition entitle him; that we keep the social solution free from frozen strata of classes; that we shall stimulate effort of each individual to achievement; that through an enlarging sense of responsibility and understanding we shall assist him to this attainment; while he in turn must stand up to the emery wheel of competition."

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