All 8 Uses of
democracy
in
Abraham Lincoln and the Self-Made Myth
- If historical epochs are judged by the opportunities they offer talented men to rise from the ranks to places of wealth, power, and prestige, the period during which Lincoln grew up was among the greatest in history, and among all places such opportunities were most available in the fresh territory north and west of the Ohio River—the Valley of Democracy.†
Subsection 3
- In time he was to marry into the family circle of Ninian Edwards, of whom it was once observed that he was "naturally and constitutionally an aristocrat and …. hated democracy …. as the devil is said to hate holy water."†
Subsection 3
- In a letter written in 1858, discussing the growth of the Republican Party, he observed: "Much of the plain old Democracy is with us, while nearly all the old exclusive silk-stocking Whiggery is against us.†
Subsection 3
- Lincoln's democracy was not broad enough to transcend color lines, but on this score it had more latitude than the democracy professed by many of his neighbors and contemporaries.†
Subsection 3
- Lincoln's democracy was not broad enough to transcend color lines, but on this score it had more latitude than the democracy professed by many of his neighbors and contemporaries.†
Subsection 3
- In Lincoln's eyes the Declaration of Independence thus becomes once again what it had been to Jefferson—not merely a formal theory of rights, but an instrument of democracy.†
Subsection 3
- For Lincoln the vital test of a democracy was economic—its ability to provide opportunities for social ascent to those born in its lower ranks.†
Subsection 3 *
- The Lincoln family was one of thousands that in the early decades of the nineteenth century had moved from the Southern states, particularly Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, into the Valley of Democracy, and peopled the southern parts of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.†
Subsection 4
Definition:
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(democracy) a system of government in which citizens have power with equal votes