Abraham Lincoln, speech at Gettysburg. 1863. The phrase "of the people, for the people and by the people" is not original with Lincoln. There is a tradition that the phrase, "The Bible shall be for the government of the people, for the people and by the people," appears in the preface of the Wyclif Bible of 1384, or in the Hereford Bible, or in a pamphlet of the period treating of that version. See Notes and Queries, Feb. 12, 1916, p. 127. Albert Mathews, of Boston, examined the reprint of 1850 https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Government