Pushkin.

It's hard to read the news these days without asking yourself, how did we get here?

Fiasco is a history podcast for the co-creators of Slow Burn.

In our first season, Bush v. Gore, we examine an unmistakable turning point in American politics, the 2000 election, which resulted in a high-stakes stalemate, ended with one of the most controversial rulings in Supreme Court history.

So if you're trying to make sense at the present moment, check out Fiasco, Bush v. Gore. Listen on theHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Welcome to episode three of my podcast on the broken Constitution, Lincoln, slavery, and the

re-founding of America. In episode one, I talked about how the Constitution of 1787 and the way that it was a

compromise between slave states and free states in order to preserve and enable the expansion

of the union. In episode two, I brought us into the breaking of that constitution by the Confederacy,

and Abraham Lincoln's corresponding breaking of the Constitution, as it was then understood,

both by going to war to coerce the southern states back into the Union, and then by

suspending habeas corpus unilaterally, even though that was a power reserved to Congress,

and through that, becoming a kind of a dictator,

one who suspended the freedom of expression in the United States

through the duration of the war,

arresting ultimately many thousands of people

and shutting down hundreds of newspapers.

In today's episode, I want to turn to the most memorable, significant, and consequential breaking of the Constitution that Abraham Lincoln

achieved, the one that had the effect of transforming not only the meaning of the Civil War,

but transforming the Constitution itself in the most fundamental way,

so much so that the Constitution of today is no longer the Constitution of 1787, but something new and different,

the Constitution of Abraham Lincoln, and then ultimately the Constitution of the Reconstruction

...