The Gettysburg Address was a long time “a-birthing,” almost nine decades, or, as Lincoln said in one of the best-known phrases in American politics: “Four score and seven years ago”— 87 years being the time between the adoption of the Declaration of Independence and when Lincoln delivered his address at Gettysburg. The Declaration, with its self-evident truths, was the mainspring of Lincoln’s political philosophy. From 1854 onward, he skinned opponents who denied the Declaration’s assertion that “all men are created equal.”