In this 1859 letter Abraham Lincoln declined an invitation to speak at an event in Boston, Massachusetts celebrating Thomas Jefferson. Lincoln used the letter as an opportunity to comment on the early party system, namely, how the parties of his day seemed to have exchanged agendas. Whereas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans privileged personal rights over property rights, the Democratic party in Lincoln’s time preferred property over personal liberty. Lincoln’s own Republican Party was for both “the man and the dollar” – but importantly, “in cases of conflict, the man before the dollar.” Calling Jefferson’s views on equality the “definitions and axioms of free society,” Lincoln castigates the despotism and oppression of slavery and remarks that those who deprive others of freedom “deserve it not for themselves.” This short yet stirring letter reiterate many of the talking points and arguments employed by Lincoln during the 1850s as well as his Presidency.