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Between now and July 4th I'll be doing a series of podcasts with authors and thinkers who have worthy things to say about the Declaration of Independence on the occasion of its 250th anniversary. I can hardly keep up with the flood of new books on the subject, and so this series my well extend beyond July 4.
I'm delighted to begin this series with Lucas Morel of Washington and Lee University, though this episode is somewhat idiosyncratic, as we take a considerable detour from the text of the Declaration itself. And that's all Lucas's fault; you see, Lucas is easily one of the top five Abraham Lincoln scholars in the nation, as well as one of the top five scholars on Frederick Douglass. Not long ago Lucas and I were together on a panel focusing in on one the key phrases of the Declaration, namely, the "pursuit of happiness."
Most of the time explaining this famous phrase involves going back to what Jefferson and other founders thought about the idea of happiness, which is much different from contemporary understandings of the term. But Lucas decided to direct our attention to one of the best interpreters of the Declaration—that person being of course Lincoln. And while Lincoln, as we know, emphasized the earlier part of that famous sentence—"All men are created equal"—Lucas draws out Lincoln's profound grasp of the whole document. I was curious about the historical and personal paradox of connecting Lincoln with the pursuit of happiness, for the obvious reason that the climax of Lincoln's life and career involved tragedy and personal melancholy. Can Lincoln be said to have fulfilled his own pursuit of happiness?
