Proverbial Democracy

At the time of the semiquincentennial of the signing of the American Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, its famous preamble “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” will be cited innumerable times. Hopefully it will also be remembered that the early feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton amended this revolutionary statement to the more inclusive “that all men and women are created equal” at the beginning of her unforgettable speech of July 19, 1848 at Seneca Falls, New York. In any case, together or in two parts, “All men are created equal” and “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” have long become proverbial and belong to the basic principles of the American sociopolitical life. But the declaration goes on to insist that to secure these rights a government needs to be formed whose powers come from the people. By the middle of the nineteenth century a companion phrase became current that expresses perhaps the most concise and best definition of what the Founding Fathers had in mind for a democracy: “Government of the people, by the people, for the people.” It has long become proverbial and is cited in speeches and writings as often as the earlier declarative statement.

What follows in these pages is a detailed survey of the origin, history, meaning, and use of the proverbial triad starting with rudimentary attempts of formulating it in 1794 by Thomas Cooper, followed by John Adams in 1798, John Marshall in 1819, and with Daniel Webster eventually having his go at it in a speech of 1830. The actual tripartite structure before Lincoln came into its own in several variants in the significant writings of the abolitionist Theodore Parker in the 1850s. He in turn influenced Abraham Lincoln in his well-known conclusion of the Gettysburg Address of November 19, 1863: “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.” There was a time when most American school children learned the entire address of merely 272 words by heart. But no matter, Lincoln’s “Government of the people, by the people, for the people” has gained such general currency that it rightfully has become a well-known proverbial definition of democracy far beyond the United States.

It is the survival of the “people”-triad that is discussed in this small book by way of numerous contextualized references based on Lincoln’s memorable words. In the nineteenth century Frederick Douglass and Elizabeth Cady Stanton helped to spread the good word, but the phrase also caught on in literary writings and in the press. In the first half of the twentieth century Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, and especially Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Harry S. Truman drew on this democratic principle in their speeches and essays. Presidents like Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Milhaus Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and Bill Clinton all followed suit, always stressing that the ideal government is one that is of, by, and for the people. In more recent years Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Donald Trump have also made sure that the message of the democratic proverb stays alive, with important politicians like Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bernie Sanders relying on the wisdom of the triad as well. All of this is discussed in considerable length throughout these pages together with additional references from political and journalistic writings. The emerging insight from this extensive documentation is that “Government of the people, by the people, for the people” is indeed the best definition of a proverbial democracy!

If I may add a personal note: In 1960, at the age of 16, I came to the United States on my own as a youthful immigrant from Germany. In due time I became a University Distinguished Professor of German and Folklore at the University of Vermont, where I taught for 50 years and pursued my studies on fairy tales, legends, folksongs, and above all proverbs. Some of my books deal with the proverbial rhetoric of Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, Harry S. Truman, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama, and it is with joy that I look back on my co-authored comprehensive Dictionary of American Proverbs (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), a considerable accomplishment and honor for a German-American. As such, my studies on the nature and politics of American proverbs have meant the world to me, and it is with much excitement that I present this study about proverbial democracy with thankfulness for my scholarly life as a naturalized citizen of the United States.

Wolfgang Mieder