The Second Founding: How the Civil Warfare and Reconstruction Remade the Structure

“Gripping and important.”—Jesse Wegman, New York Instances

An authoritative historical past by the preeminent scholar of the Civil Warfare period, The Second Founding traces the arc of the three foundational Reconstruction amendments from their origins in antebellum activism and adoption amidst intense postwar politics to their digital nullification by slender Supreme Court docket selections and Jim Crow state legal guidelines. At the moment these amendments stay sturdy instruments for reaching the American ultimate of equality, if solely we’ll take them up.