<P> With the antislavery movement gaining momentum, defenders of slavery such as John Randolph and John C. Calhoun found it necessary to argue that the Declaration's assertion that "all men are created equal" was false, or at least that it did not apply to black people . During the debate over the Kansas--Nebraska Act in 1853, for example, Senator John Pettit of Indiana argued that the statement "all men are created equal" was not a "self - evident truth" but a "self - evident lie". Opponents of the Kansas--Nebraska Act, including Salmon P. Chase and Benjamin Wade, defended the Declaration and what they saw as its antislavery principles . </P> <P> The Declaration's relationship to slavery was taken up in 1854 by Abraham Lincoln, a little - known former Congressman who idolized the Founding Fathers . Lincoln thought that the Declaration of Independence expressed the highest principles of the American Revolution, and that the Founding Fathers had tolerated slavery with the expectation that it would ultimately wither away . For the United States to legitimize the expansion of slavery in the Kansas - Nebraska Act, thought Lincoln, was to repudiate the principles of the Revolution . In his October 1854 Peoria speech, Lincoln said: </P> <P> Nearly eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for some men to enslave others is a "sacred right of self - government"....Our republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust....Let us repurify it . Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it, the practices, and policy, which harmonize with it....If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union: but we shall have saved it, as to make, and keep it, forever worthy of the saving . </P> <P> The meaning of the Declaration was a recurring topic in the famed debates between Lincoln and Stephen Douglas in 1858 . Douglas argued that the phrase "all men are created equal" in the Declaration referred to white men only . The purpose of the Declaration, he said, had simply been to justify the independence of the United States, and not to proclaim the equality of any "inferior or degraded race". Lincoln, however, thought that the language of the Declaration was deliberately universal, setting a high moral standard to which the American republic should aspire . "I had thought the Declaration contemplated the progressive improvement in the condition of all men everywhere," he said . During the seventh and last joint debate with Steven Douglas at Alton, Illinois on October 15, 1858, Lincoln said about the declaration: </P>

Who wrote we hold these truths to be self evident