Fox News’ streaming service Fox Nation has acquired the rights to the documentary “Right Makes Might” about the debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, and TheWrap has the first look at a clip from the film ahead of the film’s premiere.
“Right Makes Might: The Lincoln-Douglas Debates” will debut on Fox Nation on Thursday, September 24, and the first clip for the documentary explains how Lincoln’s rhetoric as a debater during the Great Debates of 1858 helped remind voters of their basic humanity and the tenets that the founding fathers had put in place.
“The American people were beginning to lose the language of the founders, they were beginning to lose a way of speaking about themselves as fellow citizens that reminded them of their common purpose, their common humanity and their common possession of individual rights,” Professor Lucas Morel of Washington & Lee says in the clip. “Today, we don’t hear that language very much.”
“Right Makes Might” is directed by Justin Folk, best known for the documentary “No Safe Spaces” featuring the comedians Adam Carolla, Tim Allen and Dave Rubin, and is produced by Madison McQueen Films and executive producer Ben Judge.
The documentary was meant to have a theatrical release this fall, but it will now launch on Fox Nation due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and it will be made available ahead of the first debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden that’s airing on Sept. 29 and is being moderated by Fox News’ Chris Wallace.
The film’s title is inspired by a famous quote made by Lincoln during his speech at Cooper Union, a closing summation about the need to recognize all men as created equal: “Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.”
“Right Makes Might” is narrated by Allen Guelzo of Princeton University, who has written several books about the Lincoln-Douglas debates and the origins of the Emancipation Proclamation. In 2009, he was inducted as a Laureate of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois and awarded the State’s highest honor, The Order of Lincoln, by the governor.
The documentary also features testimony from Charles Kesler (Claremont McKenna College), Lucas Morel (Washington & Lee) and Michael Burlingame (University of Illinois – Springfield).
Check out the first clip from “Right Makes Might” above.
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