The Back Story of "All Men Are Created Equal"

By Bill Shepherd

Feb. 5, 2026

On Nov. 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln offered the nation his vision of the true meaning of the sacrifices made on the Gettysburg battlefield. In the first sentence of his speech,  Lincoln transported us back to 1776 and the remarkable promise made in the Declaration of Independence — “all men are created equal.”

Too often, we read or hear that phrase without asking how or why it became our truism, our creed.

My curiosity about the origin of “all men are created equal” has been answered, most recently in the new book, “Born Equal: Remaking America’s Constitution, 1840-1920” by Yale University law professor Akhil Reed Amar.   This book describes the vast changes in the philosophy of human existence in a society brought about by the Enlightenment, also known as the “Age of Reason.”

The Enlightenment changed how 18th-century people thought about their role and standing in civil society. England, Scotland and France were the center of this philosophical revolution.

John Locke, one of the key Enlightenment political philosophers and author of the “Second Treatise of Government,” had a massive influence on the Founding Fathers. The English intellectual wrote that men should exist in a “state of perfect freedom” and “a state of equality wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal.” He also said men should be “equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection.”

This revolutionary political creed took hold in the American colonies and evolved into “all men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson’s promise of equality found meaning in Lincoln's political advocacy at Gettysburg.

Fortunately, the digitized version of the “Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln” is searchable on the Abraham Lincoln Association’s website. My curiosity prompted me to ask how many times the phrase “all men are created equal” appears in the collected works. I was surprised to learn that Lincoln had used that phrase 35 times in his speeches and writings, beginning with his first inaugural speech and ending with a letter to a friend in 1865.

Our nation’s founders were well acquainted with Enlightenment political thought on individual freedom and the preferred form of government. However, those ideas didn’t come with a glossary. But we do have books like “Born Equal” to guide us.

Image from Wikipedia