What Abraham Lincoln Understood About the Founders

Co-founder and Executive Director Jeff Shesol reviews a new book by Akhil Reed Amar that paints a sprawling portrait of 19th-century America in thrall to its founding moment.

Among the truths still held, by many Americans, to be self-evident, “all men are created equal” is the most fundamental. The current assault on that belief — waged by all three branches of government — is brazen and cruel, but not without precedent. Much of American history has been a battle over the ways we give meaning and the force of law to the idea of equality.

That struggle — to determine and fulfill, and perhaps to exceed, the founders’ intentions — is the focus of a new book by the legal scholar Akhil Reed Amar. “Born Equal” is the second volume in his three-part constitutional history of the United States.