What's the relationship between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution?

0:05Both Douglass and Lincoln, look at the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as being two sides of one coin. Lincoln once used the illustration from the book of Proverbs about an Apple of gold in a picture of silver. The Apple of gold, of course, is what is represented by the declaration and the picture of silver. The framework is the Constitution.

0:30The declaration is, so to speak, the soul of America. The Constitution is the framework is the body which surrounds that soul. At Gettysburg, Lincoln would talk about how the founders brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the declarations proposition, that all men are created equal. Yet, at the same time, he is also the ardent defender of the Constitution.

0:59For him, there was no question about a separation between the two. If you wanted to understand what the Constitution was about, you had to take your bearings from the declaration. If you wanted to know how the declaration could best be turned into a governing document rather than simply a declaration of principles, then you looked to the Constitution. He regarded both with an atmosphere that amounted almost to the sacred in 1848. He will talk about amending the Constitution.

1:31He says, don't do it. The Constitution is a document that is as good as human hands could have made it, better not to temper with it. Now, ironically, he will eventually endorse that amendment to the Constitution, the 13th Amendment that abolishes slavery. But his approach to the whole notion of the Constitution was one that was hedged around with extraordinary security and extraordinary clarity.