<P> According to Pauline Maier, Douglas's interpretation was more historically accurate, but Lincoln's view ultimately prevailed . "In Lincoln's hands," wrote Maier, "the Declaration of Independence became first and foremost a living document" with "a set of goals to be realized over time". </P> <P> Abraham Lincoln, 1858 </P> <P> Like Daniel Webster, James Wilson, and Joseph Story before him, Lincoln argued that the Declaration of Independence was a founding document of the United States, and that this had important implications for interpreting the Constitution, which had been ratified more than a decade after the Declaration . The Constitution did not use the word "equality", yet Lincoln believed that the concept that "all men are created equal" remained a part of the nation's founding principles . He famously expressed this belief in the opening sentence of his 1863 Gettysburg Address: "Four score and seven years ago (i.e. in 1776) our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal ." </P> <P> Lincoln's view of the Declaration became influential, seeing it as a moral guide to interpreting the Constitution . "For most people now," wrote Garry Wills in 1992, "the Declaration means what Lincoln told us it means, as a way of correcting the Constitution itself without overthrowing it ." Admirers of Lincoln such as Harry V. Jaffa praised this development . Critics of Lincoln, notably Willmoore Kendall and Mel Bradford, argued that Lincoln dangerously expanded the scope of the national government and violated states' rights by reading the Declaration into the Constitution . </P>

Who wrote the declaration of independence and its content was from whose documents