Lincoln Study Forum Tackles "Born Equal"

By John A. O'Brien

Denver, Colorado

Thursday, January 22, 2026

The Lincoln Group of the District of Columbia is proud to have a subgroup dedicated to Lincoln scholarship that has been working for a decade. The Study Forum has been meeting once each month for more than ten years, reading books about Lincoln and his era. From Michael Burlingame's 2-volume Green Monster (Abraham Lincoln: A Life) to Lincoln's Sense of Humor, the Forum has taken on in depth studies in an informal and most conversational manner. You should consider participating now that a new book is coming up. Go to the "Study Forum" tab above and follow the links.

Beginning on February 14, 2026, the Study Forum will discuss Yale law professor Akhil Reed Amar's prize-winning Born Equal: Remaking America's Constitution, 1840-1920. Amar has been described as one of America's most prodigious constitutional scholars. He has now written the definitive history of how the ideal of birth equality reshaped the American Constitution, from antebellum debates over slavery and secession, to the Civil War and emancipation, to women’s suffrage. This book recounts in sprightly and sometimes humorous narrative, the dramatic constitutional debates that unfolded across eight decades. Four glorious amendments abolished slavery, secured Black and female citizenship, and extended suffrage regardless of race or gender. At the heart of this era was the epic and ever-evolving idea that all Americans are created equal.

The Declaration of Independence promised birth equality that was not delivered in the first 87 years of our history. But in the nineteenth century, remarkable American women and men—especially Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Abraham Lincoln—elaborated a new vision of what this ideal demanded. Their debates played out from Seneca Falls to the halls of Congress, from Bleeding Kansas to Gettysburg, from Ford’s Theater to the White House gates, ultimately transforming the nation and the world. Born Equal is an ambitious and very readable narrative history and a penetrating work of legal and political analysis, Born Equal is a vital new portrait of America’s winding road toward equality.

The Lincoln Group was well represented at the Lincoln Forum in Gettysburg in November. We were very impressed with Amar's artful presentation that whetted our appetites to get into this amazing political story with so many implications for our world today.

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The Study Forum recently read what some consider a companion piece to Amar's work. The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction 1860-1920 by Manisha Sinha covers the social history of this period while Amar describes the economic and constitutional law perspective.    

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The facilitator for this discussion is Lincoln scholar, author, and educator Tom Peet. Tom will guide our discussion over four monthly sessions beginning on February 14, 2026. We hope you will join us.