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

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning scholar, a timely history of the constitutional changes that built equality into the nation’s foundation.

“An outstanding scholarly contribution . . . disciplined, powerful, and moving.”―Lincoln Caplan, New York Times Book Review It took the Civil War and the adoption soon after of three constitutional amendments to establish the ideal of equality in American law. The Reconstruction amendments abolished slavery, guaranteed due process and equal protection of the law, and provided black men the right to vote.

Eric Foner’s taut, masterful history conveys the dramatic origins of these revolutionary amendments and the momentous court decisions that later narrowed and even nullified the rights they guaranteed. Today these constitutional rights remain essential and contested, their history of immediate bearing in our politics and culture.