Professor Robin Einhorn looks at the 19th-century understanding of the Constitution and the changes that were made to it following the Civil War.

Linda B. Osborne discusses her book, Traveling the Freedom Road, which draws on interviews with former slaves in the Library of Congress collections to convey the aspirations, sorrows, courage, and hopes of ordinary people living through this period. More than 80 archival images complement the text. Major events covered include the rise of the domestic slave trade, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Republican Congress' Reconstruction policies.

John David Smith of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte considers Abraham Lincoln's reasons for allowing black troops to fight in the Civil War and for issuing the Emancipation Proclamation.

Historian Harold Holzer compares Lincoln's 1861 Address at Independence Hall and Obama's Race Speech at the Constitution Center.

To listen to this lecture, select "Historian Harold Holzer compares Lincoln's Address at Independence Hall and Obama's Race Speech at the Constitution Center" under "Supplemental Materials" in the right sidebar.

Historian Harold Holzer compares Abraham Lincoln's 1860 Cooper Union Speech and Barack Obama's 2008 Race Speech at the Constitution Center.

To listen to this lecture, select "Historian Harold Holzer compares Lincoln's Cooper Union Speech and Obama's Race Speech at the Constitution Center" from the sidebar on the right side of the page.

Three speakers present in this second half of an all-day symposium commemorating the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln. Lucas E. Morel presents "Lincoln on Race, Equality and the Spirit of '76"; Lincoln's lifelong interest in language is the subject of a talk given by Douglas L. Wilson; and Elizabeth D. Leonard delivers the final presentation of the symposium, "Ally on the Team of Rivals: Lincoln and His Point Man for Military Justice," in which she discusses Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt, the president's chief of the War Department's Bureau of Military Justice.

The first half of this symposium may be found here.

This presentation, narrated partially from the perspective of Oglala Lakota Sioux medicine man Black Elk, describes the Battle of the Little Bighorn and the seizing of Native American land and the forcing of Native Americans onto reservations that followed.

This presentation, told partially from the perspective of a prospector's wife, Annie Tallent, looks at the push of prospectors into the American West to find gold, focusing on the expedition of Tallent, her husband, and several other prospectors into the South Dakota Black Hills and on the tension between prospectors, the military, and Native Americans.

Dr. Michael Klarman of the University of Virginia School of Law analyzes and interprets the Brown case and its impact on the Civil Rights Movement. He annotates Justice Douglas's conference notes on Brown, tells stories about the justices, details how justices decide cases, explains why Brown was a hard case for many of the justices, and makes conclusions on why they were nonetheless eventually able to reach a unanimous outcome. He discusses the various ways in which Brown mattered and did not matter by linking Brown with the rise of southern massive resistance, violence, and ultimately the enactment of civil rights legislation in the mid-1960s. Klarman includes lessons on how and why Court decisions matter, how historians tend perhaps to overemphasize the importance of the Court's contributions to racial change in the U.S., and important reminders about how violence was necessary to prompt most whites to care about the civil rights of southern blacks.