Warning Signs Videos about Lincoln, Threats to Democracy, and Freedom

Warning Signs: Lincoln’s Response to Rising Tensions in the 1850s features four short films that help us understand our present reality.

Explore different perspectives about an extremely polarized moment in U.S. history and what it reveals about maintaining a healthy democracy today.

The films feature three dynamic experts who focus on how polarization before the Civil War affects our current civic lives.

Together, four professors describe Lincoln’s struggle with the morality of slavery and its westward expansion, the increasingly irreversible political divide, the character of the Constitution itself, and the ultimate value and meaning of human equality.

After describing Lincoln’s views on the Constitution, they tackle questions like: “What does it mean to be a self-governing people? What are the sorts of things we need to think alike about, where we can differ on policy, but what are some building blocks of democracy and republicanism and self-government that we need to all share in order to get along?”

Dr. Lucas Morel:

“For a republic to be viable, for a republic to last, for a republic to perpetuate itself, it has to produce election after election after election. Good winners. And good losers.”

Learn how Lincoln grappled with the unprecedented crisis facing the republic, his views on self-government, and how he saw progress inspired by the Declaration of Independence but bound by the Constitution.

The resources are available to the public free of charge and include Spanish-language closed-captions.