Constitution 101 2019 Course Notes Part 4

In his "Address at the Cooper Institute," Abraham Lincoln argued that Republicans would have to cease to call slavery wrong in order to satisfy the South.

Southern secessionists advanced a doctrine of undivided state sovereignty to explain the relationship between the states and the federal government under the Constitution.

The purpose of personal liberty laws was to provide due process for free black citizens.

Abraham Lincoln argued that the Southern secession movement should be understood as an insurrection.

Lincoln argued that the Civil War was a fight to vindicate republican government against an attempt to impose oligarchy on the nation.

In his "Second Inaugural Address", Abraham Lincoln argued that the Civil War should be understood as a divine judgement on entire nation for the sin of slavery.

The Progressives argued that the ends of government are historically contingent.

Woodrow Wilson, John Dewey, and other leading Progressive intellectuals were educated at Johns Hopkins University, which was founded in 1876 to bring the German educational model to the United States.

Progressives believed that there had been a constant improvement in history, which made government less dangerous to the governed.

In Liberalism and Social Action, Dewey criticizes the founders' because they "lacked historic sense."

In The American Conception of Liberty, Frank Goodnow argues that European nations are better governed because social expediency determines the "sphere of individual freedom of action.

In an essay from 1887, Woodrow Wilson argues that "in fundamental theory socialism and democracy are almost if not quite one and the same."

Source: “Constitution 101: The Meaning and History of the Constitution”