This quote is taken from Abraham Lincoln’s speech at Gettysburg. Now he isn’t a Founder, but I’ll take a little liberty with the phrase if we’ll all agree that he is at least a towering figure of the nation and its history.
The speech was a memorial for the men who died there on that field. Less than two years earlier, in July of 1863, over a period of three days, 46,000 casualties were recorded. Still to this day it is the largest recording of American casualties from a single battle.
The battle itself was incredibly significant, just as Lincoln’s words as he attempted to consecrate the field became more important than he could have ever imagined. But what I would like to focus on here is the phrase and concept of “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”
Here is an extended version of that quote which Lincoln used as the ending to his short but impactful speech:
“It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
This was not the first time the phrase was used. People of the time would have been familiar with it. It was used in political speeches and senate debates before and after Lincoln used it at Gettysburg.
But where did this popular phrase come from?
Clark Ezra Carr, a political appointee and author of the time, researched the phrase and found that it had been used for centuries in multiple languages. But its first written record is found in the preface to an old Wycliffe Bible translated sometime prior to 1384.
“this Bible is for the government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
How this phrase went from an obscure preface in an old Bible to political speeches at the highest levels of government is of no mystery.
The Wycliffe Bible was a popular text for socioeconomic reform by English peasants. In 1381 the peasants rose up against the English establishment, who blamed John Wycliffe’s writings for instigating the peasant’s discontent. Wycliffe is seen as an early reformer who like Martin Luther believed that everyone should read the Bible for themselves, and then translated it into the language of the common people.
John Wycliffe and his biblical translations became popular for people who saw government as a tool to serve people and not the other way around. American Protestants from England crossing the Atlantic with the Bible in their hands would have been very familiar with John Wycliffe and his role in the Protestant Reformation.
Not only the phrase, “government of the people, by the people, for the people”, but the concept of its truth became and has remained one of the central guiding principles for the nation.