How the Declaration of Independence Captured American Hearts and Minds

How the Declaration of Independence Captured American Hearts and Minds

[This post is excerpted from the new book, National Treasure: How the Declaration of Independence Made America (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster).] That Abraham Lincoln, our most American of presidents, "never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence," our most American of documents, seems only appropriate. That Lincoln was both a political philosopher and political genius ma…