Heather Cox Richardson

But with the Gettysburg Address,

Lincoln, I think, emphasized, you know, think about it, four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

You know, when the founders put it in the Declaration, they said, these are self-evident truths.

Mm-hmm.

By Lincoln's time, he's saying it was a proposition and it's being tested.

And that, I think, is really the heart of what it means to be an American is that there is this proposition that it is possible to create a nation that has the principles that the founders put down on paper.

But that principle is always going to be a proposition.

And he says, listen, we're here to honor these men who died in this horrible battle to try and make that proposition come true.

But there's really nothing we can do more than what they did to make that happen.

And the proposition that he actually explains at the end of that speech is that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

That to me is the marching orders.

If the declaration is the plan, the Gettysburg Address is the marching orders.

You're the one with the charmed life.

Okay, so I'm just going to be a jerk here because I'm a historian.

So we don't have to write this now, but we have to have a prologue explaining, you know, we the people or when in the course of human events or anything.

The reason I'm being such a jerk about that is because I think the key, one of the key things in this moment is to make sure we grab the idea of agency, of everyday people having agency.

So in terms of values, they got to have a say in their government.

They got to be able to vote.

So we got to protect the right to vote.

But we have to make sure that everybody has a free and fair vote.