The following is a special presentation: The Remaking of America's Constitution, a conversation from the 2025 Annual Celebration of the Humanities.

Akhil, it's a pleasure to have you here in New Hampshire.

What a treat.

So happy to sit down.

Thank you.

This book is the follow up to your earlier book, which covers the nation's founding, called The Words That Made Us.

So, Born Equal, as has been said, covers 1840 to 1920.

Just remind us, Akhil, of the dramatic changes that occurred over those just 80 years.

I mean, it's breathtaking, really, when you consider what happened over less than a century.

This is what I hope to be a three-volume trilogy of the American constitutional experience.

So, in the first eighty years, 1760 to 1840, we become a we.

New Hampshire unites with Massachusetts and Virginia and New York and South Carolina; these formerly-separate colonies come together... and first loosely, and then more tightly, and they wage a war of revolution, of independence.

They adopt a declaration of independence, eventually articles of confederation, an indivisible constitution, a bill of rights.

That's a lot, but they don't have that much in common, because the North is increasingly anti-slavery and the Deep South sees things differently.

So, in 1840, when this book begins, America's deeply divided maybe not half slave and half free, but still partly slave and partly free, and women don't vote anywhere.

And so that's 1840.

And by 1920, slavery is abolished everywhere that's the 13th Amendment.

And birthright citizenship, black and white, male and female, is proclaimed across the land equal birthright citizenship.

Blacks, in the 15th Amendment, are promised that even though they're born with darker skin, they're going to have political equality.

And by the end of this period, by 1920, the same promise is going to be made to people who happen to be born female rather than male.

So, the big theme of this eighty-year period is birth equality.

The big theme of the first eighty years is union.

And I wonder, what do you think is underappreciated about this era by the general public or even scholars?

I mean, I myself, when I think about that period, I think, Okay, the Civil War, but I don't think much beyond that.

So, what do you think most people don't appreciate about all that changed during this time?

One thing they may not fully appreciate is how it's not just about race; it's about gender.

It's about sex.

In the first book, I had six lead characters.

They're the Big Six, the six founders your first four presidents: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and your two geniuses, Franklin and Hamilton.

And that's by acclamation.

Everyone says those are the big six, but they're all men.

In this period, also eighty years, I have four characters that tell the story or that whose story I tried to tell, and two of them are women and one of the men is nonwhite.

And people [generally] understand the Civil War is about black and white and slave and free.

They may not understand, actually, that the issues of women's equality were front and center.

That's really interesting.

And I learned so much reading this book.

And let's talk about those four characters.

Who are the heroes and heroines of Born Equal, and how are they just so different from the leaders of your first book?

In this one, I'm on a first name basis with my characters.

I'm trying to introduce them to you.

So, of course, towering above all is Abe, and he... he has less than a year’s formal education in his whole life.

I’m not talking about college or law school; I'm talking about classroom education.

Less than a year!

they're all low-born.

And then there's Frederick Douglass.

And he's born a slave.

He doesn't ever even know his birth date.

You have pets; you have dogs and cats and horses, and you remember their birth dates.

He never knows his birth date.

He doesn't know who was father was.

It's hard to imagine someone born lower and who rises higher over the course of his lifetime.

And then there are two women who are front and center.

And, you know, at their birth no one would have predicted that they're going to be the leading characters.

And one is Elizabeth Cady, as she is in the first sentence of chapter one.

By the end of that first paragraph, she becomes Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

She gets married.

The fourth character, you might not guess.

So, I claim that this fourth character is America's first female superstar first leading lady.

Everyone's talking about her in a way that they weren't all talking about Abigail Adams; she's off stage.

But I'm saying before there was Taylor Swift and before there was Beyonce or Kamala Harris or Hillary Rodham Clinton or Eleanor Roosevelt, there was Harriet Beecher Stowe from New England, and she sells millions of copies of Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Her book sells more copies than Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, The Scarlet Letter, Moby Dick than any book by any American in the whole century.

And she's writing about slavery.

And she's writing about slave women and slave children, and not just slave men.

And, wow, she is important, and we've kind of forgotten about her.

I wonder, Akhil, how you see it possible for these four characters to become leaders in this new era.

You know, what changes were happening in our society, what stars were aligning that provided that opening for these four, you know, low-born, self-made people to become some of our greatest leaders?

Yeah.

Proverbially, the book begins sort of at the end of Jacksonian America, so property qualifications are dropping away.

It's perceived as a more egalitarian, democratic society, more open to even amateurs, folks of all sort.

This is Tocqueville's America.

It's seen as more flat, more level.

Western expansion, and some of the bigger property holdings are being divided up among the children and people are moving out west, and there's a lot of upward mobility.

I highlight the woman angle as well, especially, by the very end of this period, 1920.

So, I actually ask, you know, first, Why do women get the vote and why so much later than men?

And I have a whole bunch of hypotheses, but here's just one of them.

It's just very dramatic: So... infant mortality drops dramatically.

In 1850, 40% of children born alive will not see their fifth birthday.

Wow.

And by 1920, it's dropped in half.

Now, what that means is that women won't have to have as many children.

And childbearing is actually also quite risky, so women are going to have longer life expectancies.

Their lives are going to be more like men because they're not popping out as many children.

Harriet writes not just as a woman, but as a mother.

And she writes about mothers like Eliza Harris, not just men like Uncle Tom.

And she has lost a child, and she writes about that.

Jane Austen, whom I adore and who features in the book this is the 250th anniversary of her birth she writes simply as a lady.

We don't know her name in her lifetime.

And Louisa May Alcott, from this part of the world, actually writes under androgynous pseudonyms.

And the Bronte sisters actually write under male pseudonyms Currer, Acton, and Ellis Bell not as Elizabeth Bronte or Charlotte Bronte.

George Sand and George Eliot too.

So, Harriet is out there as a woman, as a mother.

Most of those people that I just mentioned actually never bore a child.

She did.

She knows what it's like to lose a child.

And so she has a certain empathy for slave women whose children are being ripped away from them.

But there are a lot of things that are happening I'll give you one other example.

I told you about changing infant mortality.

Here's another thing that happens: people move out west.

That makes a big difference because the sort of old structures, the old families, the Adams families, the Jeffersons all those old established families don’t have the pull and the sway in these new territories.

Everyone's the same.

Yeah.

Everyone's the same.

Stephen Douglas is a transplant.

Abe is actually Kentucky-born, then moves to Indiana, then to Illinois.

And it’s such a young society.

So there's that.

But especially, also, when gold is discovered in California and people move out west, the men tend to go first.

And what this is going to mean and I actually give you statistics on this woman suffrage comes first from the West.

Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho.

It comes first bluntly in the places where there are no women.

See?

Because who has to vote for women's suffrage?

The people who already vote.

They're all male.

At a certain point in time t0 no women is voting anyway.

They can't vote themselves the votes.

The men are going to have to vote them the vote, and the men are going to vote them the vote where there are no women, because the men are actually desperate.

And in Wyoming, for example, I give you the data!

Wyoming has six white men for every white woman in 1870 when as a territory it gives women the vote.

And of the nine most gender- imbalanced territories or states in 1890, the ones that have the biggest differential between men and women every one of those nine is going to become one of the first 11 women's suffrage states.

That correlation is higher than smoking and cancer.

You don't see this kind of a correlation.

Actually, in the social sciences but here's the thing: you won't find that statistic in any other book.

Yeah.

Another thing that's going on at the time of territorial expansion and imbalanced gender ratios: you also describe that Americans are living in an era of incredible mass communication, Akhil, especially just an amazingly robust newspaper and magazine industry.

So, how do these four, again, low-born, self-made Americans, use this rich tapestry that we have of magazines and newspapers and pamphlets and so forth... how do they use that to become leaders?

So, Abe, again, he has less than a year’s classroom education in this life, and he reads and reads and reads.

And he reads books and he loves Aesop's fables and he loves Euclid.

Oh, he's really into logic.

And he knows his Bible.

And so Aesop's fables, Shakespeare... some classics.

But he also prodigiously reads newspapers.

And actually, as a young person, he starts writing for newspapers, anonymously at first.

And that was true of a young Alexander Hamilton, and Ben Franklin is, of course, a newspaper publisher.

This is a newspaper culture and they interact... Earlier I was backstage, but I heard conversation and people talking to each other back and forth.

The newspapers were a medium for that.

And, when you have the telegraph, the Lincoln-Douglas debates can be stenographically recorded and immediately, like at literally the speed of light, sent to all parts of the country.

The entire country is listening in on a bunch of con.

law debates constitutional law debates between two lawyers.

So it's the telegraph and it's the newspaper culture.

But let's take Harriet Beecher Stowe I'll give you all four very quickly.

She publishes Uncle Tom's Cabin in a serialized manner, and it's published in installments in a newspaper.

Just like Dickens did, but he wasn't doing it politically.

Hers was in a political newspaper an anti-slavery newspaper.

Frederick Douglass is a newspaper publisher, you know, and he has several newspapers of his own.

And Elizabeth Cady Stanton actually knows how to get attention in the newspaper.

She's brilliant at memes.

So, she basically takes the Declaration of Independence and she riffs on it at Seneca Falls, and she comes up with a document that the newspapers reprint.

And here's a key sentence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal.

And the newspapers find this very interesting.

She knows how to grab attention in petitions also, which are reprinted in newspapers.

It's that kind of culture.

We should talk about Frederick Douglass.

Just an unbelievable character.

I didn't realize before I read this book, for example, Akhil, that Frederick Douglass and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were friends, and that Douglass gave his voice his amazing, impressive, powerful voice Baritone!

... to the cause of women's suffrage.

So, I had no idea.

So walk us through that, if you could, please, Akhil.

So, again, I was backstage, but I heard a little bit of a story about, you know, two people getting married.

And so here's act one, scene one, chapter one: Elizabeth accompanies her husband, Henry, who was an anti-slavery activist, and they go to the world's first anti-slavery convention in London.

Okay?

They're on their honeymoon.

And these are the most reform- minded people in the world.

There are politicians and journalists and academics and business people.

And the first thing the men do is kick out the women.

Okay?

That's on day one.

And Elizabeth is not amused by this.

Okay.

So, that's Elizabeth.

And she says to Lucretia Mott, who's a great female crusader, Quaker, and abolitionist from Philadelphia, Damn it!

Maybe she doesn't say damn it.

She says, When we get back to America, we're going to have our own convention.

So this is 1840 London.

She's on her honeymoon.

Eight years later, Seneca Falls.

She does stage her own convention.

And she says, We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal.

And she advocates women’s suffrage in 1848.

And even Lucretia thinks, This is a little edgy.

But she has one person who really strongly supports her coming over from another city in upstate New York: Frederick Douglass, who’s already world-famous, says, She’s right!

And Frederick helps Elizabeth.

And Frederick is a huge women's rights crusader for his whole life.

The day he dies, he's actually at a women's suffrage convention and sits next to Susan B. Anthony, goes home to have a bite to eat, and has a heart attack.

So, you know, all the way, he’s a crusader for Black rights.

You know, one could say the guy had enough going on.

I mean, he had enough struggles, he had enough battles, and yet, he loaned his time, his energy, his voice to this cause.

It's impressive.

It is.

Now, it's complicated, because when the Civil War ends, Blacks are going to get the vote and women aren't Black men are going to get to vote and women aren’t.

And Frederick doesn't love it, but he'll take half a loaf.

And Elizabeth is really annoyed that actually she thinks that Frederick is betraying the cause.

He's not.

He's become, over the years, just a little bit more savvy, and he's no longer quite the radical he once was.

And, I take the deal now and then try to push for more later.

Well, that kind of has to do with his relationship with Lincoln, right?

I mean, initially, he felt Lincoln was too gradual, too tentative.

So, go ahead.

Yeah.

So, initially, he's very much on the outside, but as he comes to wield more influence, he realizes that in politics you can't get everything you want immediately.

What's impressive about Lincoln is not that he's the most advanced politician of his era; he never is the most advanced.

But he's always the most advanced politician who has a chance of getting elected.

And he always moves in one direction because he knows where the North Star is, okay, and he never actually regresses.

And that's Lincoln.

And Frederick Douglass comes to see, Gee ... You know, Frederick Douglass is so mean to Lincoln in print.

Mean?

What does he say?

He says like, you know, He doesn't really believe in anti-slavery.

You know, He's just a horrible white man.

Oh, and he can't even write!

He's been so nasty to Lincoln.

He just shows up at the White House unannounced and Lincoln says, I know who you are.

Sit down.

I'm delighted to meet you.

Thank you for coming.

That's the first meeting.

And by the third meeting... The second meeting is we have to work together to get southern Black slaves to leave their plantations and join the Union Army because that will be the margin of victory.

Right.

And they're working together to do this.

And the third meeting is Lincoln's second inaugural, and Douglass crashes the party shows up and the guards try to kind of push him away.

And he says, Tell Lincoln I'm here!

Tell Lincoln I’m here!

The word kind of filters over to Lincoln.

He says to them, Let him in... And Lincoln goes and searches him out, and Douglass says, You have other people to talk to.

He says, No.

You're the person I most want to hear from.

There’s no one whose opinion I value more than yours, sir.

And, Tell me what you thought of the speech.

And Douglass says, It was a sacred effort.

And Lincoln said, I'm so glad you liked it.

And those are the last words exchanged between America's greatest white man and greatest Black man.

And I don't know if you know that story, but you'll learn that story and others in the book.

I mean, that's what makes the book come to life I think, is, again, you've got this serious constitutional treatment, you've got the rich history, but you had these people and these moments, and it’s quite beautiful.

Elizabeth is racist and bigoted in all sorts of ways.

Abe is the product of his culture.

And he will grow over time, but even he is imperfect in certain ways.

And I think Harriet Beecher Stowe has just a nobility in when she writes to Douglass, she doesn't even know him, but she calls him her brother in Christ.

She's, you know, the egalitarian, utopian end of the movement.

But she can, to her critics, seem very preachy and condescending, looking down, you know, on slave masters.

Lincoln is very good at hating the sin, but loving the sinner.

They're all imperfect in their own ways.

But wow!

America produced these people once.

Can we do it again?

This person asks, How would Lincoln guide us to bridge the cultural political gap today?

It's a tough one, but it's a good one.

Well, we've already begun to talk about it: Lincoln talks to everyone.

He marries into a slave- holding Kentucky family.

He's a Southerner.

His father's from Virginia and his mother, and he speaks with a drawl.

And his favorite song is Dixie.

But he's very good at reaching across the aisle, and he says, Listen.

you Southerners didn't create slavery; you inherited it.

And if we were in your place, we'd probably think the way you do.

So, he does listen to everyone.

He's very good that way.

And he is proverbially honest.

No one called Stephen Douglas Honest Stephen Douglas because he wasn't!

He was a liar!

You know, I wouldn't buy a used carriage from that man!

I wouldn't!

Okay.

And Roger Taney is not honest.

So, wow.

America produced this person who was whip smart and honest and was willing very much to talk with people who hated him.

We have a lot of law students from UNH Franklin Pierce School of Law watching both in person and online.

So, I wonder, Akhil, how would you like the next generation of lawyers to consider our constitutional history because they all take con.

law?

How would you like them to consider our constitutional history differently based on this book?

So, I'm going to be really harsh and ornery and cranky.

I'm 67 years old now.

You're permitted.

So, the fundamental problem is the younger generation doesn't read books and doesn't read long books.

My wife and I have three kids.

One went to Georgetown.

Two went to Yale.

They don't read books.

Their friends don't read books.

And it's a problem, because if we don't, we die.

Abe read books.

Frederick Douglass read books.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton read books.

So did Harriet Beecher Stowe.

You can't write books without reading books.

So, the first thing that I would want people and the students to do is, you know, read the books.

Someone says, Why were indigenous people not included in the struggle for equality until very much later?

Tribes are not part, are kind of excluded, but not Native Americans.

Okay?

But the tribes were able to make treaties with the United States, but not directly with the French or the Spanish or the Brits.

And here's why.

Because the Americans were afraid that the tribes might be able to ally with America's enemies.

Of course.

America's Constitution does not exclude Native Americans when they say excluding Indians not taxed not taxed in the Constitution and the 14th Amendment.

The exclusion is of tribal Indians who are in territorial enclaves.

They're not fully sovereign, but they are threats to the American military project in a way that's not altogether different than how Confederate states wanting to secede can be threats.

We could talk a lot longer, but I have one last question.

And this comes from our audience, but I had the same question as well, so thank you to this person.

Can you give us a little preview of volume three?

The name and just quickly what it's going to be about?

The name, tentatively, is Earth's Best Hope, which is a phrase of Lincoln's We shall nobly win, or meanly lose, the last best hope of Earth.

And it's about how I think we remain the indispensable nation in the world.

There are more democracies than there ever were because the United States constitutional project.

We're one of the first democracies and we show, you know, that it can work.

Earth's Best Hope There are democracies in the world, and we're all struggling, including ours.

And in India and in Germany today or Hungary or Poland... Ukraine.

Our project is so much harder because we bring together the great grandchildren of all the other peoples on the earth, and that's not true of the French or the German or the Swiss or the Norwegian or the Indians in the Indian subcontinent.

So, it's a harder project because we're so multicultural and diverse.

So, in the final volume, I do think we're Earth's best hope.

And we got to the moon and we came in peace for all mankind.

I actually believe that.

Okay.

I was nine years old at the time, but in this story, there are 55 chapters rather than 17, and 13 last book, but the chapters are much shorter, time is speeding up.

I've got many, many more characters because all sorts of things are going on and we keep fighting all these wars.

So, there's the first Asian war and the second Asian war and the third Asian war and the fourth Asian war.

So, there are a lot of wars in the book.

It's a lot more about foreign policy.

A lot more characters.

There are more assassinations.

And I don't know how it ends because no one knows how it ends.

It has just been so much fun having you here.

Thank you so much for taking the time to come and join us here in the Granite State.

It has been just an absolute pleasure.

Thank you, Akhil.

♪ [applause] This has been a special presentation: The Remaking of America’s Constitution, a conversation from the 2025 Annual Celebration of the Humanities.

♪