A New Birth of Freedom, Part 1 | America's Written Constitution with Akhil Reed Amar

Lincoln campaigned on a gradual plan: no slavery in the territories, and abolition in perhaps a century. Akhil Reed Amar explains that plan, and why nothing like it happened. This lecture closes the founding era and sets up the Civil War amendments. Amar first derives much of the original Constitution from a single premise, national security, tracing how the need for a government that could tax, raise armies, and bind states through treaties produced bicameralism, a separate executive and judiciary, popular ratification over the heads of state governments, and eventually a Bill of Rights. He then turns to what that system failed to do. Congress could bar slavery from the territories but was never required to, and the North won the race for western settlement partly by luck: Indian defeats in Ohio, European immigrants avoiding competition with slave labor, and Southern fear of importing enslaved people after the Haitian revolution. From Jefferson through Jackson to Taney and Dred Scott, the system tilted further toward slavery, until Lincoln won on a deliberately modest platform of no new slavery and gradual, compensated abolition on the pattern the northern states had used. Chapters: 00:00 Closing the founding era 01:45 National security as the starting premise 07:27 Going over the heads of the state governments 09:28 The Sedition Act and the election of 1800 11:30 Why the founders' system eventually failed 12:32 Luck, and the race for western land 14:36 Jackson, Taney, and Dred Scott 16:08 Lincoln's platform: no new slavery 19:45 How gradual emancipation had worked in the North Learning objectives: After watching, you'll be able to: - Derive the main structural features of the Constitution from the national security premise - Explain why the framers appealed directly to the people rather than to state governments - Identify the contingencies that kept slavery from spreading across the territories - Summarize Lincoln's actual anti-slavery platform in 1860 - Describe how gradual emancipation statutes worked in the northern states 📺 Watch the full playlist on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCq6-l8oFuvk 🎓 Enroll on Coursera for assessments and a certificate: https://www.coursera.org/learn/written-constitution 🌐 Explore more learning opportunities on Yale Online: https://online.yale.edu/courses/americas-written-constitution