Property v. Equality: America’s Enduring Political Rivalry follows the centuries-long contest between liberty and equality from Athens to the American Founding and into today’s policy debates. Drawing on the Founders’ commitments to private property and equality of opportunity, Ott traces party realignments, the moral crisis of slavery, Lincoln’s “fair chance” agenda (infrastructure, the Homestead Acts, and Land-Grant Colleges), the rise of progressive income taxation after the Sixteenth Amendment, the New Deal, civil rights, and modern arguments over redistribution and representation. The result is a guided tour of how ideals become institutions and how those institutions keep rebalancing freedom and fairness.