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Slavery and Liberty at America’s Founding

Live at the National Constitution Center

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Lincoln's Relationship With the Constitution

Lincoln's first inaugural address on March 4th, 1861 is an overlooked masterpiece in the Lincoln canon. He reminds his listeners and the broader reading audience that you don't have an oath to destroy the Union while I shall have a most solemn oath to preserve, protect, and defend it. The height of the ambiguity of that statement comes in the fact that if one looks through the incoming correspondence to Lincoln during the secession crisis before he goes to D.C., the suggestion of the metaphor came from rather unlikely source.

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