A 1941 text poster quotes Lincoln on slaves, masters and the ballot

A text-only poster catalogued at 1941, with no issuer printed, quotes Abraham Lincoln twice: "As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master," with his idea of democracy, and a line on the ballot and the bullet. It is signed only with his name and "16th President of the United States" (NAID 513883).

The text

There is no picture: dark type on pale blue, two passages separated by a row of stars, and a name. The archive's transcription keeps the poster's own hyphenation at line ends.

AS I WOULD NOT BE A SLAVE, SO I
WOULD NOT BE A MASTER. THIS EX-
PRESSES MY IDEA OF DEMOCRACY.
WHATEVER DIFFERS FROM THIS, TO
THE EXTENT OF THE DIFFERENCE,
IS NO DEMOCRACY.

*******

AMONG FREEMEN THERE CAN BE NO
SUCCESSFUL APPEAL FROM THE BAL-
LOT TO THE BULLET, AND...THEY WHO
TAKE SUCH APPEAL ARE SURE TO LOSE
THEIR CASE AND PAY THE COST.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

16th PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

The ellipsis in the second passage is on the poster. It marks a cut the poster's maker made, and the sheet does not say what was left out.

What the record gives, and what it does not

The poster names Lincoln and nothing else: no speech, letter, date or page. Neither passage carries a citation in the FRAME record, and none is added here. The issuer is not printed. The archive lists the issuer type as mixed and the themes as the home front and elections and party politics, and dates the sheet 1941.

The archive tags testimonial, because a revered president's name carries the message, and glittering generalities, because "democracy" is the word doing the work.

A quotation that cuts both ways

As propaganda goes, this is the gentlest kind. It asks nothing of the reader: no purchase, no enlistment, no report. It offers two sentences about self-government and leaves them on the wall.

They are also sentences that bind whoever posts them. A definition of democracy as refusing to be anyone's master is a test for a government as much as for an enemy, and a warning against appealing from the ballot to the bullet holds for every side. Whoever put this on a wall in 1941 invited readers to measure their own government by the same rule.

Two other founding-text sheets: the unsigned From the Declaration of Independence, catalogued the same year, and Roosevelt's 1937 Constitution proclamation. A later Lincoln poster, made for audiences in Asia, is All Men Are Created Equal.