Lincoln had a penchant for writing down ideas, thoughts, and arguments on scraps of paper, some of which he stored in his top hat. Many of these undated fragments were discovered after his death and do not have an assigned date. This fragment reveals the clear incompatibility in Lincoln’s mind between democracy and slavery: If “all men are created equal,” then no one has a right to rule another without that other’s consent. The master-slave relationship is thus antithetical to rule by consent among equal human beings.