How Abraham Lincoln Invented American Democracy

Steven B. Smith is the Alfred Cowels Professor of Political Science at Yale University and Co-Director of Yale’s Center for the Study of Representative Institutions.

Democracy is more often invoked than defined or described in public debate. What does that word then mean? Smith argues forcefully that American Democracy can be dated from the afternoon of Nov.19, 1863 when Abraham Lincoln announced “a new birth of freedom” in the Gettysburg Address. His words linked for the first time the struggle against slavery with the struggle for democracy both at home and abroad.