Only some of the goals of the proponents of these amendments were reached. The Fifteenth, which aimed to ensure Black male suffrage throughout the U.S.The Fourteenth, which wove into the Constitution the principles of birthright citizenship and equality before the law.
The Thirteenth, which irrevocably abolished slavery.
Nonetheless, a key legacy of that time and that initial effort are the three Constitutional amendments adopted by Congress and ratified by the states: Much about this transition from a slaveholding society to an egalitarian community still needs to be accomplished, and the nation’s failure to live up fully to the ideal of the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address continues to plague Americans, particularly African Americans. That’s the subject of Eric Foner’s 2019 The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution, a work that also won the Pulitzer Prize:ĭuring Reconstruction, the United States made its first attempt, flawed but truly remarkable for its time, to build an egalitarian society on the ashes of slavery. New laws and constitutional amendments were needed to make his vision a reality. It would become esteemed as a shiny statement of national beliefs, but it carried no weight in law. Yet, for all its stirring rhetoric, Lincoln’s speech was just a speech. In his address, Lincoln proclaimed a higher ideal, a more humane and compassionate conception, one rooted in the Declaration with its clear, direct, unequivocal statement that “all men are created equal.” (Today, of course, we have come to understand those words to mean “all people are created equal.”)
It was, as Wills details in his 1992 Pulitzer Prize-winning history Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America, a revolution carried out in the space of three minutes and in the speaking of 272 words.īefore the Civil War, the national vision was rooted in the Constitution with its acceptance of slavery. Nearly four decades ago, historian Gary Wills explained how Abraham Lincoln used his Gettysburg Address to redefine - rededicate - the United States by enshrining the Declaration of Independence as the core statement of the nation, instead of the U.S.
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