Home  >  Visit the Museum  >  Changing Exhibits  > Lincoln

Would Our Constitution Survive?

Even as the convention that framed the U.S. Constitution ended in September 1787, Americans began debating critical issues that their founding charter left unresolved. Were the states truly “united”? How could a country founded on the belief that “all men are created equal” tolerate slavery? Would civil liberties be safe in a national emergency? Like ticking time-bombs, these issues threatened to explode. Finally, with the election of Abraham Lincoln as the nation’s first anti-slavery president, they did. As the country plunged toward civil war, Americans wondered whether their new president-elect—a one-term congressman and trial lawyer from Illinois—could resolve the crisis. Would Abraham Lincoln survive the test? Would the nation?

The National Constitution Center in Philadelphia—the world’s first interactive museum dedicated to honoring and explaining the U.S. Constitution—opens Lincoln: The Constitution and the Civil War. Produced in association with The Lincoln Museum of Fort Wayne, Indiana, Lincoln: The Constitution and the Civil War, a 2,500-square-foot traveling exhibition, will show how Lincoln’s momentous struggle to save the Union transformed the nation and its Constitution.

Neither a traditional biography of Lincoln nor a conventional exhibit on the Civil War, Lincoln: The Constitution and the Civil War explores how Lincoln met the enormous challenges of the Civil War and why his very human struggle still matters to us today.. Though the Civil War was a military conflict waged between North and South, at base it was a constitutional crisis—the severest test of the American experiment in popular self-government since the founding of the Republic. Lincoln understood this, and met the challenge.

From families with young children to Civil War buffs and history scholars, everyone will find something engaging in Lincoln: The Constitution and the Civil War.

Lincoln: The Constitution and the Civil War is produced in cooperation with the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission


Exhibition Credits
Project Director: Steve Frank
Project Manager: Kristie Sheppard
Research: Brian Riggs
Registrar: Lynn Klein
Exhibit Design: Krent Paffett Carney Design and The American History Workshop
Exhibit Media: Hillmann & Carr
Curator: John Rumm

Voice of Lincoln: Sam Waterston

Scholarly Advisors
Michael Les Benedit, Ohio State University
Lonnie Bunch, Chicago Historical Society
Daniel Farber, Universtiy of California, Berkeley
Joan Flinspach, The Lincoln Museum
Harold Holzer, The Metropolitan Museum
Allen C. Guelzo, Gettysburg College
Mark E. Neely, Jr., Penn State University