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Available
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Collection
Publication
W. W. Norton & Company (2019), Edition: 1, 256 pages
Description
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar, a timely history of the constitutional changes that built equality into the nation's foundation and how those guarantees have been shaken over time. The Declaration of Independence announced equality as an American ideal, but it took the Civil War and the subsequent adoption of three constitutional amendments to establish that ideal as American law. The Reconstruction amendments abolished slavery, guaranteed all persons due process and equal protection of the law, and equipped black men with the right to vote. They established the principle of birthright citizenship and guaranteed the privileges and immunities of all citizens. The federal government, not the states, was charged with enforcement, reversing the priority of the original Constitution and the Bill of Rights. In grafting the principle of equality onto the Constitution, these revolutionary changes marked the second founding of the United States. Eric Foner's compact, insightful history traces the arc of these pivotal amendments from their dramatic origins in pre-Civil War mass meetings of African-American "colored citizens" and in Republican party politics to their virtual nullification in the late nineteenth century. A series of momentous decisions by the Supreme Court narrowed the rights guaranteed in the amendments, while the states actively undermined them. The Jim Crow system was the result. Again today there are serious political challenges to birthright citizenship, voting rights, due process, and equal protection of the law. Like all great works of history, this one informs our understanding of the present as well as the past: knowledge and vigilance are always necessary to secure our basic rights.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member rivkat
Short book. “Members of Congress during the Civil War and Reconstruction had the irritating habit of not debating at length, or at all, concerns that have driven recent jurisprudence relating to the amendments.” The Supreme Court screwed up the amendments early on by limiting them to favor
Foner also covers how black voices have been ignored in discerning the framers’ intent, even though black votes were key to passing the Fourteenth Amendment, and how Chinese exclusion was “promoted, in part, as a fulfillment of the Thirteenth Amendment” by keeping out people allegedly too servile to be citizens. And the amendments themselves were a hodgepodge of compromise; a few far-sighted commentators noted that the exemption for prisoners in the Thirteenth Amendment could do great damage, and now it has. Also, did you know that the Fourteenth Amendment provides for reduction of representation if states disenfranchised significant numbers of male voters, but that was never implemented? And the Fifteenth Amendment could have guaranteed a right to vote, precluding most of the tactics now being deployed against mostly minority voters, but it didn’t, in part because many white Westerners wanted to exclude Asians and some Northeastern states imposed literacy or property tests on immigrants. As for Southern tactics to suppress voting, “Republican leaders also did not expect that the South’s political leaders would not mind—or might even welcome—the fact that significant numbers of poorer whites would lose the right to vote because of such laws.”
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whites (and expanding them to favor corporations), and we haven’t yet fixed that. As he points out, by the 1890s, when the Reconstruction amendments started to get their still-fixed interpretations, “the Court’s members included Edward D. White, a former Confederate soldier with a deep abhorrence of Reconstruction who as a young man had participated in efforts by a white paramilitary organization to overthrow Louisiana’s biracial government,” and who became Chief Justice in 1910. The Court struck down laws that tried to protect voting rights generally and to protect citizens against private racist violence. At every point, even though the history is contested and there were always different views of the meaning of the amendments, the Court has taken the narrow view.Foner also covers how black voices have been ignored in discerning the framers’ intent, even though black votes were key to passing the Fourteenth Amendment, and how Chinese exclusion was “promoted, in part, as a fulfillment of the Thirteenth Amendment” by keeping out people allegedly too servile to be citizens. And the amendments themselves were a hodgepodge of compromise; a few far-sighted commentators noted that the exemption for prisoners in the Thirteenth Amendment could do great damage, and now it has. Also, did you know that the Fourteenth Amendment provides for reduction of representation if states disenfranchised significant numbers of male voters, but that was never implemented? And the Fifteenth Amendment could have guaranteed a right to vote, precluding most of the tactics now being deployed against mostly minority voters, but it didn’t, in part because many white Westerners wanted to exclude Asians and some Northeastern states imposed literacy or property tests on immigrants. As for Southern tactics to suppress voting, “Republican leaders also did not expect that the South’s political leaders would not mind—or might even welcome—the fact that significant numbers of poorer whites would lose the right to vote because of such laws.”
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LibraryThing member nmele
In this short book, Dr. Foner goes through the background to the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, using contemporary sources, to make the case that those three amendments did not simply abolish slavery but established broad principals that should have
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governed the expansion of civil rights for African-Americans but that were limited by later Supreme Court decisions that shied away from the clear intentions of the Amendments and permitted the exclusion of black voters, the Jim Crow laws, and the use of violence to keep African-Americans from exercising their rights. The parallels with our recent and ongoing Supreme Court decisions are obvious. Show Less
LibraryThing member nbmars
Pulitzer Prize winner Eric Foner is recognized as America’s leading expert on the history of the period immediately after the U.S. Civil War, known as Reconstruction, during which the North tried to build an egalitarian society. The title of his latest book, The Second Founding, encapsulates his
The principal purpose of the original ten amendments to the Constitution, the Bill Of Rights, was to protect individuals from the power of the new central government. Though the original authors of these documents (often hallowed as “the Founders”) wanted a national government more formidable than the one established by the feckless Articles of Confederation, they sought to limit the power it could exercise over its citizens. But those constraints did not apply to individual states. For example, many of the states continued to have established religions even though the first Amendment forbade the national government from establishing any single religion.
Foner argues convincingly that the Civil War was fought over the southern states’ efforts to preserve the institution of slavery. [Although the declarations of secession by Southern states clearly articulated that the protection of slavery was the paramount impetus for the rupture per, for example, Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, enough later Southern history revisionists averred that secession was actually about "states' rights" that the argument has to be constantly relitigated.] But even though the North had won the war, there was no immediate legal basis for eliminating slavery or for protecting the newly freed slaves from the depredations or their former masters. Ironically, the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 had “freed” only those slaves still under the control of the rebel armies, leaving slaves in the northern and border states in a legal no-man’s-land concerning servitude.
The legal scaffolding for reorganizing the country took the form of three transformative amendments to the Constitution: the 13th, 14th, and 15th. The 13th abolished slavery throughout the country. The 14th established birthright citizenship for any person born in the United States “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” along with requiring the states to provide “due process” and “equal protection” to all “persons within their jurisdiction.” The 15th prohibited the states from denying the right to vote to any person on the basis of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” The effect of these amendments and the Civil Rights Act of 1866 was to attempt to put into practice the ideal of equality expressed in the Declaration of Independence. To that end, the amendments invested substantially more power in the national government and provided the means to make the national government the protector of individuals against discrimination and unfair treatment by states or local governments.
This indeed was revolutionary.
Discussion: Foner is not only superb historian, he is an excellent legal analyst. As an historian, his description of the political maneuvering behind the adoption of the amendments is riveting. But what really stands out in his narration is his explication of the legal niceties behind the language adopted. [Well, maybe that’s just the lawyer in me enjoying some good legal writing.]
Unfortunately, the story of the second founding does not end with the adoption of praiseworthy amendments. As Foner recounts, the language of the amendments left enough wiggle room for malevolent racists in the postwar South to reestablish white race-based hegemony. With the end of U.S. Grant’s presidency in 1877 (Grant was dedicated to ensuring that freed blacks realized their newly legislated rights), national commitment to helping and protecting blacks ended in large part as well. Northern troops were withdrawn from the South. “Jim Crow” laws taking rights away from blacks were enacted in one state of the South after another. The Klan was given free rein to exercise police power over blacks without fear of reprisal. Schools and other public services for blacks were defunded. History textbooks used in southern schools were designed to teach white superiority and black backwardness, so that children imbibed these ideas from the earliest age. These practices persisted until the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, but did not end entirely. Rather, they took on new shapes; the battle for racial justice continues to this day.
Foner recapitulates the sorry history of how a complicit United States Supreme Court abetted racist politicians and lower court judges in their efforts to eviscerate the original intent of Civil War Amendments for almost 100 years after their enactment. Again, his legal skills come to the fore as he takes us through the intricacies of numerous cases that constitute the corpus of civil rights jurisprudence.
Evaluation: This book is surprisingly brief (only 176 pages) considering the depth with which it treats a complex subject. It’s principal thesis, that the Civil War and Reconstruction completely overhauled the Constitution and the society it governed, is ably and cogently argued. I very highly recommend it as required history for all American citizens.
(JAB)
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thesis that the changes to American society effected during Reconstruction were so profound they amounted to a new beginning - indeed, a second founding - of the nation.The principal purpose of the original ten amendments to the Constitution, the Bill Of Rights, was to protect individuals from the power of the new central government. Though the original authors of these documents (often hallowed as “the Founders”) wanted a national government more formidable than the one established by the feckless Articles of Confederation, they sought to limit the power it could exercise over its citizens. But those constraints did not apply to individual states. For example, many of the states continued to have established religions even though the first Amendment forbade the national government from establishing any single religion.
Foner argues convincingly that the Civil War was fought over the southern states’ efforts to preserve the institution of slavery. [Although the declarations of secession by Southern states clearly articulated that the protection of slavery was the paramount impetus for the rupture per, for example, Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, enough later Southern history revisionists averred that secession was actually about "states' rights" that the argument has to be constantly relitigated.] But even though the North had won the war, there was no immediate legal basis for eliminating slavery or for protecting the newly freed slaves from the depredations or their former masters. Ironically, the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 had “freed” only those slaves still under the control of the rebel armies, leaving slaves in the northern and border states in a legal no-man’s-land concerning servitude.
The legal scaffolding for reorganizing the country took the form of three transformative amendments to the Constitution: the 13th, 14th, and 15th. The 13th abolished slavery throughout the country. The 14th established birthright citizenship for any person born in the United States “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” along with requiring the states to provide “due process” and “equal protection” to all “persons within their jurisdiction.” The 15th prohibited the states from denying the right to vote to any person on the basis of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” The effect of these amendments and the Civil Rights Act of 1866 was to attempt to put into practice the ideal of equality expressed in the Declaration of Independence. To that end, the amendments invested substantially more power in the national government and provided the means to make the national government the protector of individuals against discrimination and unfair treatment by states or local governments.
This indeed was revolutionary.
Discussion: Foner is not only superb historian, he is an excellent legal analyst. As an historian, his description of the political maneuvering behind the adoption of the amendments is riveting. But what really stands out in his narration is his explication of the legal niceties behind the language adopted. [Well, maybe that’s just the lawyer in me enjoying some good legal writing.]
Unfortunately, the story of the second founding does not end with the adoption of praiseworthy amendments. As Foner recounts, the language of the amendments left enough wiggle room for malevolent racists in the postwar South to reestablish white race-based hegemony. With the end of U.S. Grant’s presidency in 1877 (Grant was dedicated to ensuring that freed blacks realized their newly legislated rights), national commitment to helping and protecting blacks ended in large part as well. Northern troops were withdrawn from the South. “Jim Crow” laws taking rights away from blacks were enacted in one state of the South after another. The Klan was given free rein to exercise police power over blacks without fear of reprisal. Schools and other public services for blacks were defunded. History textbooks used in southern schools were designed to teach white superiority and black backwardness, so that children imbibed these ideas from the earliest age. These practices persisted until the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, but did not end entirely. Rather, they took on new shapes; the battle for racial justice continues to this day.
Foner recapitulates the sorry history of how a complicit United States Supreme Court abetted racist politicians and lower court judges in their efforts to eviscerate the original intent of Civil War Amendments for almost 100 years after their enactment. Again, his legal skills come to the fore as he takes us through the intricacies of numerous cases that constitute the corpus of civil rights jurisprudence.
Evaluation: This book is surprisingly brief (only 176 pages) considering the depth with which it treats a complex subject. It’s principal thesis, that the Civil War and Reconstruction completely overhauled the Constitution and the society it governed, is ably and cogently argued. I very highly recommend it as required history for all American citizens.
(JAB)
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LibraryThing member Schmerguls
5708. The Second Founding How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution, by Eric Foner (read 25 Sep 2020) This little book is the fourth book by Foner I have read. It tells the interesting story as to how the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution came to be added. He
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also relates how the Supreme Court has handled those amendments--in this the 14th has been most interpreted, in many cases involving issues unrelated to why it was adopted. He shows that the Supreme Court weakened the amendment in the 19th century and that weakening has not been set aside by the Court, so that students of constitutional law have a lot more trouble understanding that amendment than one would expect..Relatively few cases involving the 13th and 15th amendments have occurred whereas the 14rh has given rise to much litigation indeed, much unrelated to what it ostensibly was enacted to cure. Show Less
LibraryThing member kcshankd
It's just so g*****n bleak. We've done this before, and given in at the finish line. We are one more federal election way from a minority party nullifying election results they don't like. The terrible thing is that would mean the cynics were right all along.
Awards
Cundill History Prize (Longlist — 2020)