The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution

The text portrays a society in flux, where the federal government and various social groups contended with the challenge of integrating millions of formerly enslaved individuals into a society that had been fundamentally altered by war and the abolition of slavery. The book addresses significant social issues such as racial discrimination, inequality, and the struggle for civil rights. It critically examines how the Reconstruction amendments—the 13th, 14th, and 15th—were designed to address these issues by establishing new legal standards for citizenship and equality. However, the text also documents the resistance these amendments faced. It presents various alternative visions for societal organization during this era. For example, it contrasts the approaches of Radical Republicans, who advocated for strong federal intervention to protect civil rights, with those of moderate and conservative figures, who preferred a more gradual, state-led approach to Reconstruction.

The book discusses key Supreme Court cases that had profound implications for the Reconstruction amendments, showing how the court’s conservative interpretations often aligned with the prevailing societal forces that opposed radical changes to the racial status quo. The court’s decisions often mirrored the intense resistance to Reconstruction from Southern states and sympathetic factions in the North. This resistance was not merely a matter of legal disagreements but was rooted in deeply held beliefs about race and hierarchy that many Americans were unwilling to abandon. By limiting the federal government’s ability to enforce the Reconstruction amendments, the Supreme Court effectively allowed local and state jurisdictions to perpetuate a social order that continued to disenfranchise and discriminate against African Americans.