Born Equal: Remaking America's Constitution, 1840–1920

by Akhil Reed Amar, Basic Books (publisher)

From America's foremost constitutional scholar, the definitive history of how the ideal of birth equality reshaped the American Constitution, from antebellum debates over slavery and secession, to the Civil War and emancipation, to women's suffrage

In 1840, millions of Black Americans groaned in the chains of slavery. By 1920, millions of American men and women of every race had won the vote.

In Born Equal, the prizewinning constitutional historian Akhil Reed Amar recounts the dramatic constitutional debates that unfolded across these eight decades, when four glorious amendments abolished slavery, secured Black and female citizenship, and extended suffrage regardless of race or gender. At the heart of this era was the epic and ever-evolving idea that all Americans are created equal. The promise of birth equality sat at the base of the 1776 Declaration of Independence. But in the nineteenth century, remarkable American women and men-especially Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Abraham Lincoln-elaborated a new vision of what this ideal demanded. Their debates played out from Seneca Falls to the halls of Congress, from Bloody Kansas to Gettysburg, from Ford's Theater to the White House gates, ultimately transforming the nation and the world.

An ambitious narrative history and a penetrating work of legal and political analysis, Born Equal is a vital new portrait of America's winding road toward equality.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, Law, Politics, History and Politics

Audible Audio

First published September 16, 2025

About the author

Akhil Reed Amar is currently Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, where he teaches constitutional law in both Yale College and Yale Law School. He received his B.A, summa cum laude, in 1980 from Yale College, and his J.D. in 1984 from Yale Law School, where he served as an editor of The Yale Law Journal. After clerking for Judge Stephen Breyer, he joined the Yale faculty in 1985. In 1994 he received the Paul Bator award from the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy, and in 1997 he was awarded an honorary doctorate of law by Suffolk University. In 1995 the National Law Journal named him as one of 40 “Rising Stars in the Law,” and in 1997 The American Lawyer placed him on their “Public Sector 45" list. His work on the Bill of Rights also earned the ABA Certificate of Merit and the Yale University Press Governor’s Award. He has delivered endowed lectures at over two dozen colleges and universities, and has written widely on constitutional issues for such publications as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, The New Republic, and Slate. He is also a contributing editor to The American Lawyer. His many law review articles and books have been widely cited by scholars, judges, and lawmakers; for example, the Justices of the United States Supreme Court have invoked his work in more than twenty cases, and he has testified before Congress on a wide range of constitutional issues. Along with Dean Paul Brest and Professors Sanford Levinson, Jack Balkin, and Reva Siegel, Professor Amar is the co-editor of a leading constitutional law casebook, Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking. He is also the author of several books, including The Constitution and Criminal Procedure: First Principles (Yale Univ. Press, 1997), The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction (Yale Univ. Press, 1998), America’s Constitution: A Biography (Random House 2005), and most recently, America’s Unwritten Constitution: The Precedents and Principles We Live By (Basic Books, 2012).

from http://www.law.yale.edu/faculty/amarb...

Reviews

[Jordan Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Professor Akhil Reed Amar’s Born Equal: Remaking America’s Constitution, 1840–1920 is nothing short of a masterclass in constitutional history (of course, we would expect no less from one of the nation’s premier liberal-originalist scholars). I was honored to receive an advance copy of the book last week, and I devoured it in just 72 hours. Born Equal should be required reading for every student, leader, and citizen who cares about the promise of equality in America, especially at a moment when some powerful individuals are trying to rewrite history for political convenience.

Professor Amar’s thesis is both sweeping and profound: taking the Constitution seriously means taking its fundamental commitment to “the birth-equality principle” seriously—a task that itself requires grappling with the text, history, and structure of our foundational documents. Taking readers on a gripping journey through the antebellum era, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and women’s suffrage, Born Equal shows how the principles of liberty, equality, and democracy were extended—imperfectly but powerfully—to millions who had long been denied them. Along the way, readers meet not only renowned heroes like Lincoln, John Quincy Adams, and Charles Francis Adams, but also long-forgotten figures like Henry Beckford, whose voices remind us that the struggle for equality has always been fought by both the famous and the overlooked.

Even expert readers will take great delight in learning new details and encountering novel insights herein, but what makes this book truly special is its ability to meet the moment for a general audience. Although Professor Amar wrote Born Equal before President Donald Trump’s 2025 executive order targeting birthright citizenship, the book now feels eerily prescient. Powerfully, Professor Amar goes well beyond recounting constitutional history; he demonstrates why it matters right now, and he offers readers the essential foundation to confront some of the biggest constitutional battles over equality in the coming decade.

At its core, Born Equal is a book about both the promise and the unfinished work of the birth-equality principle. Professor Amar’s narrative deftly provides the deep context that we need to understand the stakes of both present and future constitutional debates. As a former student of Professor Amar’s and a longtime reader of his work, I found this book both illuminating and inspiring. It cements Professor Amar’s place as one of this era’s great constitutional historians, and it leaves me eagerly awaiting the final installment of his “Words That Made Us” trilogy. Bravo!

I unabashedly give this book five stars, and I enthusiastically recommend it to all.

[Josh Jablonski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Professor Amar is far and away my favorite historian and constitutional scholar. Born Equal builds on his last book, The Words That Made Us, and continues the great story of the Constitution of the United States.

[Doug · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little long, but all in all a masterful retelling of the Second Founding and the Reconstruction Amendments. An incredibly timely book about how the Declaration stated “all men are created equal” and those brave souls (including but not limited to Lincoln) who fought in the battlefield, the courtroom, and the Capitol to enshrine that proposition in our Constitution.

[Adam Shields · Rating 5 out of 5]

Summary: An exploration of how the United States slowly became a country where additional people were increasingly more likely to be "born equal."

Born Free is the third of Akhil Reed Amar's books which I have read. (The Bill of Rights Primer: A Citizen’s Guidebook by Akhil Reed Amar and Les Adams and America’s Constitution: A Biography). Both of those books are  long and as he said on Advisory Opinions when he was asked about the length of Born Equal, he said, well it was shorter than some of my previous books.

Born Equal is worth reading even if it is quite long. It is the second of a trilogy about the Constitution. I have not read the first, The Words That Made Us: America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840, but I will get to it before the third comes out. I think it should be compared to Mark Noll's trilogy about the use of the bible in American public life. Noll's has published two of the three, In the Beginning Was the Word: The Bible in American Public Life, 1492-1783 and America’s Book: The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilization, 1794-1911. Noll's book about the roughly same period was about 150 pages longer than Amar's already long 753 page tome.

Part of why I compare them is that both are trying to contextualize their subject to a modern reader. Noll is trying to show how central the bible was rhetorically to public life. But Noll is also pointing out how much the view and use of the bible was shaped by people molding the bible to fit their point, not allowing scripture to shape them. I do not know if Amar is religious, but he is known for being a progressive originalist. While most legal originalists are ideologically conservative, Amar regularly points out that originalism is not about political conservatism but about paying attention to the words.

The theme that runs through Born Equal was that Abraham Lincoln was the foremost originalist legal theorist of his age and that after the founding generation passed away, and their children passed away, there needed to be a recovery of a legal theory of how to view the American governmental system. Amar contends that Lincoln had an originalist theory that took seriously the words of the constitution as the basis of the meaning and limitations and role of the government.

The second main theme of the book is that the Declaration of Independence should be understood as providing context of the ideals of the constitution, even if the actual early leaders of the United States did not live up to the ideals that were put into the Declaration of Independence. The Dred Scott decision said that the US government was under no obligation to view Black residents of the US, whether slave or free, as citizens. And that view, that many of the people in the US, all women, Black people (many who had been brought to what became the United States against their will but by the mid 1800 many were 4th or 5th generation residents of the United States, and Native Americans all were not allowed many privileges of citizenship. Born Free traces constitutional history from the rumblings of succession and the Dred Scott decision until the passage of the 17th (direct election of senators), the 19th (women's suffrage) and the 20th (alterations to President's term of office and other changes) amendments.  All three of these amendments (and the 18th) were expressions of an expanding democracy. (Native American's were officially recognized as citizens between the 19th and 20th amendments.)

I was skeptical of the claim of Lincoln's being one of the early originalists in the early pages of the book. But I was pretty convinced by the end. In many ways, while I am not convinced by many of the conservative originalist arguments which often would fail to overturn Plessy or that give us current "history and tradition originalism", Amar's focusing of originalism on the ideals of America as found in the Declaration of Independence and then fleshed out in the constitution made sense of a type of originalism. It has become almost cliche to talk about the reconstruction amendments as the second founding of America, but Amar is tracing the thread of the reconstruction amendments through the 20th as being ever expanding democracy that was living out the ideals of the Declaration.

I know I didn't have a great education in history. We studied the revolution and the civil war and then skipped to the gilded age and the depression and didn't really get much past that. I was taught that reconstruction was a failed experiment as was common. But Amar and Foner and many others of the past forty years have been refocusing on reconstruction as the tipping point toward real democracy. Amar's originalism doesn't do what my history education did, abstracting the founding from its real context and ignoring the reality of a fundamental reshaping of the conception of the US with the reconstruction amendments (even if they were not fully realized and there was a significant backlash that gave rise to a 100 years of Jim Crow).

I also think that I am interested in this type of legal history because of my background in biblical hermeneutics. Bringing Noll back into this, part of what Noll gets into more than Amar does (but is an undercurrent of what was going on during this era) was the rise of a split between fundamentalism and a type of ecumenical pluralism. The fundamentalists wanted a cultural uniformity and a flattening of the understanding of scripture. I have heard from many fundamentalist leaning teachers that the bible can only have one meaning of every passage. While the pluralists can have a problem with ever expanding meanings so that anything can be made from anything. I think that Amar is trying to make the argument that originalism can give us some boundaries that doesn't flatten or remove context from judicial interpretation. And that the same time it doesn't promote an ever expanding meaning that allows the interpretation to support near limitless expansion of the role of government or rights. There will be conflict. And part of the way forward is not to use the courts to keep changing the meaning of the laws or constitution, but to actually make changes to the law and constitution when it doesn't accomplish the ideals that were set out in the Declaration of Independence.

I originally posted this on my blog at https://bookwi.se/born-equal/

[Charles Clow · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was incredibly excited to get my hands on this book on Constitution Day 2025. Akhil Amar is my favorite constitutional scholar; I listen to every episode of his podcast that Dr. Andy Lipka hosts. There were things I liked about this book, but on the whole it left me disappointed for one petty stylistic reason and one earnest historical reason, as well as some other reasons I’m still working through.

1. The first-naming of major historical figures is incredibly grating. I understand intellectually why Professor Amar made this choice, but it casts a peculiarly juvenile gloss over such a rich text.

2. The book’s treatment of Lincoln is quite odd. At times, it seems as though Amar admires Lincoln because Lincoln was an originalist. Setting aside that this label originated about a century after Lincoln was killed, Lincoln’s excellence — which I understand and respect — comes from his intellect, political and oratorical skills, grit, and above all, moral insight that sharpened as his challenges (and the nation’s) deepened. Lincoln does not need to fit Amar’s preferred intellectual paradigm in order to be great. Even if he did, it is unclear how this would enhance Amar’s argument about the U.S.’s ongoing “constitutional conversation;” certainly non-originalists participate in and shape this conversation also?

This is nowhere more evident than Amar’s treatment of Lincoln’s magisterial Second Inaugural Address. Ronald C. White, a leading Lincoln biographer, refers to this as “Lincoln’s greatest speech;” it is one of two speeches, alongside the Gettysburg Address, to flank Lincoln’s statue at the memorial in Washington DC. But it merits about one paragraph in Born Equal’s 600+ pages, presumably because it is a forward-looking document, whereas all of the other Lincolnian texts cited by Amar include overt historical references that demonstrate Lincoln’s purported originalism. I see the point of including Lincoln’s historically-oriented writings about constitutional power and the primacy of the Declaration of Independence in Lincoln’s thinking. But you can keep those facets of studying Lincoln while also analyzing Lincoln’s vision for what would come next after the conclusion of the Civil War, and do it all without shoehorning Lincoln into a 20th century-contrived constitutional bucket of ideas (originalism). Books such as Eric Foner’s The Fiery Trial pull this off very well. Amar’s effort here is less successful.

To be clear, I admire Lincoln as a president, a man, and a constitutional thinker. Having read Born Equal, it’s clear that Amar does too; just for different reasons than I do. And unfortunately, his reasons do not make sense to me.

In addition, Born Equal suffers from a lack of inclusiveness that undermines some of its arguments’ potency. In Born Equal, the “great man” theory of history is expanded to also include (some) “great women,” but I found the individualistic nature of Amar’s arguments a smidgen weak. Obviously it would be impossible to include *every* noteworthy constitutional thinker from this era, but the near total absence of Native American thinkers was hard to stomach. Zero mentions of Wovoka, to name one Native leader who pushed boundaries and reshaped intertribal relations in the late-1800s seemed like an obvious inclusion to me, but evidently not to Professor Amar.

Throughout his scholarship, Akhil Amar has taught me lessons about the Constitution and about U.S. history that I am grateful for. Unfortunately, not many of those lessons come from Born Equal.

[Jonathan Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received an advance reader copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review on my Goodreads page.

Born Equal: Remaking America's Constitution (1840–1920) is the second installment in a planned trilogy tracing the evolution of the U.S. Constitution. I really enjoyed the first book in the series, and this follow-up is equally strong—perhaps even stronger. It picks up the story in the antebellum era, moves through the Civil War, and concludes with the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which secured women’s suffrage. There are some detours backward to earlier history as well for context.

Blending history, biography, and legal analysis, this book offers an accessible yet deeply informative account of constitutional transformation during a pivotal period. While it could easily be categorized as academic, the prose is highly readable, and I believe both casual readers and scholars alike will find much to appreciate. The author lays out the complex legal developments of the tie covered with clarity, making intricate topics feel approachable and engaging.

The standout sections for me were those covering the Reconstruction Amendments. The author does an excellent job clarifying the original intent behind these landmark constitutional changes—something that is often misunderstood or oversimplified in modern discourse. I only wish there had been more detail on the 19th Amendment passage towards the end of the book, though the author acknowledges that space constraints likely played a role in limiting some areas and there are plenty of details which clearly describe the buildup woman's suffrage as early the 1840s.

Overall, this is a compelling and thoughtful read, and I look forward to adding it to my collection when it's released on September 16, 2025. I also look forward to the final book in a few years!

[Amad Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

As American independence approaches its 250th year, it will receive a fitting gift in the completion of Akhil Amar’s three-part history of the nation’s constitutional conversation. The second volume in this trilogy, Born Equal, traces the crucial period from 1840 to 1920, when by courage, blood, and genius Americans enshrined in their Constitution the radical promise of birth equality. The heroes of this movement—figures like Lucretia Mott, Frederick Douglas, and most of all Abraham Lincoln—shine with a splendor rarely achieved in scholarly writing. Born Equal brims with vivid anecdotes, tragic relationships, and hilarious details that carry its 600 pages with the momentum of a novel, all in accessible and lively prose.

Amar shows that the most effective champions of equality understood themselves as faithful stewards of the Constitution. One leaves this book inspired: if our forebears fought and died to expand the equality inchoate in America’s constitutional tradition, who are we to abandon it? One may also leave intimidated by the depth of antebellum Americans’ constitutional knowledge, at least one who, like me, learned next to nothing about American history in high school. Our saving grace is that Amar has nearly finished his endlessly informative and delightfully readable guide to that tradition. No other books do what this series does, and you need someone like Amar—a preeminent legal scholar and historian, trained by the greatest scholars of both disciplines—to get it right.

This is a rare book that will teach law professors as much as it teaches your nephew in the eighth grade. Amar’s books reward study by experts and lay readers alike. They teach, certainly, but they also inspire. Few books accomplish either of these ambitions; only great ones achieve both. This book does.

[Happy Booker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I could give this book more stars. Akhil Reed Amar brings the constitution to life in his Born Equal book. A second in his series beginning from 1860 to 1920. No need to read his first in this series, The Words That Made Us, as this fact based book stands alone to help one understand the journey it took to work toward equality. America's formative years were tumultuous as the founders passed their leadership from our country's beginnings to the next generation to carry forward into a new era. Amar blends history and law to show how the principle of equality has evolved focused on our constitution. As the country grows in terra firma, Americans stretch their muscles in the North and in the South. Amar focuses on the seeds of equality at the founding of the constitution as it existed despite slavery and later compromises like the Three-Fifth Clause. After the Civil War the reconstruction amendments were written to reshape the charter of equality up to and including the nineteenth amendment for equal voting rights. His clear explanations bring complex constitutional ideas into a readable narrative, making a case that equality remains the representation at the very heart of all Americans. I highly recommend Born Equal, a scholarly and accessible book for all seeking a deeper understanding of the ideals that continue to define and challenge our democracy.

[Shelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fascinating book, filled with so much information and analysis that I had never heard before or fully understood when placed in proper context. Having read previous books by this author, my expectation was high when I pre-ordered this latest work. Even so, I was blown away by how accessible he has made even the most complex topics and historical events. I am so eager to read the next book in this series. My one complaint is that the author himself did not narrate the audio version of this book. I have deeply appreciated the skill with which he narrated previous books so was surprised that he wasn’t the narrator for this one. All the more so once I began listening to what I will now rank as the all time worst narrator I have ever heard. I go through a lot of audio books and am amazed on a regular basis what a great job so many of them do. The narrator for this book failed on so many levels. The unnatural pauses in each sentence were annoying and only become more so the longer I listened. Worse still was him giving everyone a southern accent. I so wish that I had bought the Kindle or hardcover version instead and spared myself the agony of a very long book read by a very bad narrator.

[Robyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Born Equal is presents an informed and detailed analysis of the period between the 1860s and the 1920s. I have not completed the book as I was given an ARC from the publisher and #NetGalley, and it is simply too detailed, and information filled to complete in the 4 weeks it was made available. That being said, the sections I completed presented a view of America that should be not only widely understood, but also widely taught.

I believe that all Middle & High School US History teachers need to read this book. It should form the foundation of their US history instruction as it hits and details all of the challenges that come with the growing pains of our US experiment. Once it is published, I will be purchasing a copy for not only myself, but the history teachers in my network. It is that important and relevant to how we should teach and inform our students today.

(My review is only 4 stars now because I have not completed it, it really feels like a 5 star book!)

[K B · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would enthusiastically recommend Born Equal to both lay readers and more knowledgeable audiences. The second installment in a trilogy, Born Equal builds upon the strengths of its predecessor, The Words That Made Us, welding meticulous scholarship to accessible style. It brings previously overlooked or under-emphasized historical evidence to light and weaves this original research into a compelling historical narrative with significant implications for the interpretation of the Constitution today. The book is long but manages to feel short—thorough without being ponderous, brisk without being flippant, and nonpartisan without adopting sterile value-neutrality toward the deep moral, political, and constitutional conflicts it details. The use of visuals is an unusual but rewarding move. Finally, for those looking to learn more, the endnotes are an excellent, carefully compiled resource, and Professor Amar's other books are the ideal place to begin.

[Thomas Mackie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Huge read that focuses on political history and readings of the US Constitution that have either clarified or challenged the original document

[van1998 · Rating 4 out of 5]

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[D. Marshall M.D. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Detailed explanation about the U. S. Constitution and how it applies to abolition of slavery and women's suffrage.

[Seth Petok · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinary! One of the best American history/constitutional accounts ever published! Narrative is exquisite and very well researched.

[R G · Rating 5 out of 5]

You are probably wondering whether it’s worth tackling over 600 pages. I promise you it is.

This book will change the way you think about the United States. It covers the period when we really tried to deliver on our foundational promise of equality, regardless of race or gender. The bitter and difficult struggle involved many imperfect actors. If you think times are tough now, try fighting for equality between 1840 and 1920. Read about the people who devoted their lives to the cause, but never lived to see their dream come true. This book will make you grateful for the those who fought for the freedoms we enjoy, reflect upon the need to continue the struggle, and make you proud to be an American.