Reference no: EM133252253

Question: In the beginning of this excerpt, the author noted the early American society established divisions (e.g., gender, wealth, labor) that limited power and privileges for many people. By contrast, Abraham Lincoln and 20th century reformers argued that rights and privileges were based on what idea? (see paragraphs 13-15)

The essence of the Declaration--and, therefore, of America-was its statement about universal personhood. Against that, Douglas's view could not stand. "The doctrine of self-government is right," Lincoln agreed, but not in the case of slavery. The just application of it, he said, "depends on whether a negro is not or is a man. ... If the negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me that all men are created equal; and not that there can be no moral right in connection with one man's making a slave of another." (Paragraph 13)

That was the question: Who was a man? Who was a person? All the rest flowed from that. Nine years after Springfield and Peoria, when Lincoln rose to address the mourners at Gettysburg, he did not date the birth of the nation to the ratification of the Constitution. "Four score and seven years" mean 1776. (Paragraph 14)

The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s ensured that the legal promises that had been made a century earlier- full citizenship rights for blacks- would beconie reality nationwide. In terms of constitutional rights and practice, the argument-ever black personhood is settled, though even now the detritus of slavery remains, whether in the dismal health and education statistics of the Cotton Belt or northern inner cities. By the 1980s, a new generation of African Americans had arisen, products of the nation's finest universities. Some of them chose to work in those downtrodden places. (Paragraph 15)