This is an IHeart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the

American people. And one of the things we love to do on this show is tell stories about our

great American history. Up next, a story courtesy of Vince Benedetto, founder, president, and CEO of Bold Gold Media Group

on a story that he and I wrote together for Newsweek.

It's entitled Lincoln's Greatest Speech Americans Have Never Heard.

And the speech that we're talking about is the Cooper Union speech given on February 27, 1860, a critical point in

America's history from before Lincoln was president or even on the radar of being one.

Without further delay, here's Vince with the story.

It was early winter in 1860,

and the country was at an inflection point

that makes today's division seem trivial.

It wasn't merely slavery that was on trial.

Not quite two decades shy of our first centennial,

the founding father's vision itself hung in the balance.

A growing segment of America's population were claiming that the authors of the Declaration

of Independence and the Constitution were fighting to advance the lives of only white men.

The founders, a growing chorus of revisionists maintained, had no room in this new nation for black people.

But one man took it upon himself to write the definitive response to these long, simmering claims.

Though the world knows his Gettysburg address, it was Abraham Lincoln's speech at a new technical college in New York City that helped propel him to national prominence.

In the mid-19th century, a large number of Americans, particularly those in the southern states, advanced

an argument that our founding fathers never intended to end slavery or provide equality to anyone

...