The tenth amendment simply says that all powers re not expressly given to the federal government, or forbidden to them, are given to the states. So so southerners interpret this to mean that they the right to secede. This is where it's very, you know, this is where the opening sentence is important. The revolution was a once and for all event. And a civil war, there's no such thing s a civil war. When it was called the war between the states men, lincoln uses the phrase civil ar but legally, he didn't believe it was a civil war."
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, ten sentences long, delivered at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery at Gettysburg after the Union forces had won an important battle with the Confederates. Opening with " Four score and seven years ago," it became one of the most influential statements of national purpose, asserting that America was "conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" and "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom-and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." Among those inspired were Martin Luther King Jr whose "I have a dream" speech, delivered at the Lincoln Memorial 100 years later, echoed Lincoln's opening words.
With
Catherine Clinton
Denman Chair of American History at the University of Texas and International Professor at Queen's University, Belfast
Susan-Mary Grant
Professor of American History at Newcastle University
And
Tim Lockley
Professor of American History at the University of Warwick
Producer: Simon Tillotson.