How Lincoln freed the slaves is just as important as the fact that he did. Lincoln’s effort would be worthless if it undermined the Constitution whose protections he was trying to extend to American slaves. In this lecture, Lucas Morel argues that the Emancipation Proclamation was a call to Americans, black and white, to think and act as a free, self-governing people. A constitutional people.

About the Speaker

Dr. Morel is Lewis G. John Term Professor of Politics at Washington and Lee University. He is president of the Abraham Lincoln Institute, trustee of the Supreme Court Historical Society, and board member of the Abraham Lincoln Association. In the 2008-09 academic year, he was the Garwood Visiting Research Fellow at the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He also teaches in the Summer Masters Program in American History and Government at Ashland University in Ashland, Ohio, where he also serves on the board of advisors. He has written for the Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, First Things, and Richmond Times-Dispatch, and is currently writing a book entitled "Lincoln, Race, and the Fragile American Republic."