This week on the Lectures and History podcast, a discussion about Reconstruction and America's

story. University of Pennsylvania law professor Kermit Roosevelt, who teaches constitutional law,

asserts that modern America traces its political sentiments to Lincoln and the Reconstruction era

rather than the founding fathers and the revolution.

So we use this idea of an American identity that's rooted in values, not in blood, not in geography,

to bring us together, to inspire us to make sacrifices in the name of our shared ideals.

So it's important to have an agreed upon understanding of who we are, of what our values are.

Professor Kermit Roosevelt is the great-great-grandson of Theodore Roosevelt.

All right, hi, everyone, and welcome to today's lecture. So in less than an hour, I'm going to give

you the argument of this book. I'm going to give you a new way of thinking about American history and American identity.

Let's start with the old way, which is what I call the standard story.

The standard story tells us American history starts in 177676 with the Declaration of Independence.

The Declaration articulates the fundamental American ideal of equality, with the

startling new proposition that all men are created equal.

And the American patriots fight for that ideal in the revolution.

They make it part of our higher law in the Constitution,

written in 1787. And our history since then has been a more or less steady progress towards

realizing this idea. Now, the standard story admits we've fallen short, but we're moving forward.

And you can look at key moments in American history, where Americans come together in the name of this ideal, and it guides us forward.

1776, of course, with the Declaration, 1863, with the Gettysburg Address, when Lincoln tells us that America is dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

In 1963, when Martin Luther King calls on us to rise up and live out the true meaning of that phrase.

So that's our fundamental principle, guiding us since the beginning.

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