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Executive Decision

Welcome to Executive Decision, the podcast that reviews some of the most significant decisions in history: why they happened; how they happened, and what they tell us about the process of decision making.

Dec 24, 2022

In this final part of our six part episode on Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, we review exactly how Lincoln made his decision--one that was forced upon him by circumstance, and the unwavering insistance of millions of Americans that slavery be abolished, forever.

Audio Clips:

  • Martin Luther King,...


Dec 24, 2022

On July 8, 1862, Abraham Lincoln journeyed to Harrison's Landing, Virginia, to confer with US General George McCellan on the conduct of the war against the southern insurrection. During the meeting, McCellan delivered Lincoln a memorandum that instructed him to abandon any effort to liberate the four million slaves...


Dec 24, 2022

In part four of our episode on Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation we review the causes of the Civil War, and the momentous events of the 1850s, especially the Fugutive Slave Act and the Dred Scott decision, which rallied northern opinion against the expansion of slavery, and the southerners who insisted...


Dec 24, 2022

American slavery may have been the most successful totalitarian system in history, lasting ten generations, far longer than comparable 20th century totalitarian regimes. In some ways, slavery's success as an economic and socio-political system was that it was just brutal enough to generate effective rates of return on...


Dec 24, 2022

In the antebellum South, democracy was racialized; as the vote was extened to every white man, it was granted in return for the political support of forced labor slavery. In part two of our six part episode on Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, we review this process, and the social context in which...