2021: Lincoln and the Broken Constitution

2021: Lincoln and the Broken Constitution

Join NOAH FELDMAN, one of America’s most renowned Constitutional scholars, in a groundbreaking discussion of how President Abraham Lincoln broke decisively with major constitutional precedents during the Civil War, effectively rewriting the Constitution’s place in the American system. Before the Civil War, the Constitution was best understood as a compromise pact—a rough and ready deal between states that allowed the Union to form and function, and that protected slavery notwithstanding its immorality. After Lincoln, the Constitution came to be seen as a sacred text—a transcendent statement of the nation’s highest ideals. Feldman will illuminate Lincoln’s constitutional choices and how he made them—and place Lincoln in the rich context of thinking of the time, from African American abolitionists to Lincoln’s Republican rivals and Secessionist ideologues.

Read more about Noah Feldman here.