Born Equal: Remaking America's Constitution, 1840–1920

The Declaration of Independence states that to be born in the United States is to be born with certain unalienable rights, but the Constitution as originally written made no such claims to birthright equality for all native-born Americans. In fact, it took four separate constitutional amendments across eighty years to even begin to offer all Americans full participation in our democracy. In this discussion with James Oakes, constitutional historian Akhil Reed Amar examines the men and women, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Abraham Lincoln, who fought for—and achieved—an end to slavery, as well as guaranteed citizenship and suffrage across race and gender.