Lincoln and the American Dream - LAC and "the ability to discern the relationship between" workaday realities and highest principles. UNI LAC.

Lincolns genius lay in his ability to discern the relationship between
the workaday, economic realities of American life and the nations
highest moral and political principles.

In Lincolns mind, the
opportunity to improve ones condition was an essential feature of
the Declaration of Independences claim that human beings have
unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.


To Lincoln, the economic, moral, and political elements were
inextricably intertwined. Together, they represented what is
distinctively American about our economy and democracy. I have never
had a feeling politically, Lincoln said,that did not spring from the
sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.

The reason
that government of the people, by the people, and for the people was
worth preserving and even worth fighting a war to preserve was
precisely that it offered this opportunity to each American to improve
ones condition. More than any other president, Lincoln is the father
of the American Dream that all Americans should have the opportunity
through hard work to build a comfortable middle class life. For Lincoln,
liberty meant above all the right of individuals to the fruits of their
own labor, seen as a path to prosperity. To [secure] to each labourer
the whole product of his labour, or as nearly as possible, he wrote,
is a most worthy object of any good government.