To some degree it depends on what you think the words mean. To another degree it depends on how you view American history ~ as a nation with a succession of government structures, or as a government with different rule books.
I kind of tend toward the idea that the National Constitution is as was expressed in the Declaration ~ and that was Abraham Lincoln's opinion on the matter ~ "Four Score and Seven Years Ago", not "Three Score and Thirteen Years Ago".
Not going to duel over it ~ not yet ~ not this time ~ but for the first time in his speechgiving career he got it right.
The DoI is more of a statement and a set of principles. Even if some want to consider it the actual Constitution it’s still technically a separate document. I agree it could be considered an honest mistake although when the speech is written ahead of time it’s less excusable. It makes him sound stupid, as if he needed any help.
we don’t have to “duel” over it but Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address does not absolve Obambi of the charge of historical and constitutional incompetence.
I don’t believe anyone except a handful of people far more learned and subtle than Obambi think of the word “constitution” as referring to something other than the 1787 document in the National Archives, and its amendments: the words, principles, ideas which are actually expressed from 1787 onward in the “constitution” and its ratified amendments.
Any “normal” usage of the word “constitution” in that context refers to the document itself, its words and principles, and not to a more comprehensive but unratified, un-recognized “National Constitution” embracing Jefferson-to-Lincoln or more.
If Obambi meant something more or different or more complex, there had to have been at least some allusion to the idea that he was talking about combined 1776-1787-1863 documents-ideas-events, not simply about the “constitution” which to every last one of his listeners referenced to the 1787 document and not to some more academic “National Constitution” which only 20 people alive would refer to in that way.
Also, even the references to “all men are created equal” in both the Declaration and the Gettysburg Address do not remotely correspond to what Obambi means by “equal” in 2010. For both Jefferson and Lincoln “equality” meant a kind of formal equality before the law. No one to be treated differently by law and officials according to their place in society....
Yes it can certainly be argued (quite persuasively I’ll say) that the terms in which Lincoln framed his brief, famous address tied the “founding” of the nation back to the D-of-Independence, but I don’t think that changes in any way the ordinary reference to the word “constitution” which in Obambi’s sentence meant the document of 1787 which was then ratified over the coming 1-2 years and amended 27 times in our history.....
when anyone refers in a political speech to the “constitution” it is a specific reference to that document and its amendments — no matter how many theories can be offered about how Lincoln subsumed both the Declaration and the Constitution into a new understanding of the nation, I don’t believe one can ever say that the simple reference to “constitution” in his speech subtly means a more intricate “National Constitution” including the Declaration and other documents, principles and values which were not spelled out in the 1787 constitution.....
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. 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.