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Aug 28, 2025
Between 1840 and 1920, the American Constitution underwent a profound transformation. Four landmark amendments — fueled by movements to abolish slavery, expand citizenship, and secure voting rights — redefined the nation's democratic foundations and asserted a radical promise: that all Americans are born equal. But this evolution was neither linear nor inevitable. It was forged through fierce debates, moral reckonings, and political conflict that stretched from Seneca Falls to Gettysburg, from abolitionist newspapers to the floor of Congress.
In this conversation, legal scholars Akhil Reed Amar and Jeffrey Rosen revisit that pivotal century to explore how figures like Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Abraham Lincoln reframed the Constitution as a living instrument of inclusion. They’ll examine how law and activism collided to expand the meaning of equality — and what that history reveals about the unfinished work of democracy today. At a moment when questions of citizenship and rights are again contested, the story of America’s constitutional rebirth offers both warning and possibility.
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