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

We shouldn’t forget that the original United States Constitution, for all its brilliance, did explicitly condone the practice of slavery. For example, the “three-fifths compromise” counted slaves as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of calculating state representation in Congress, while Article 1, Section 9, Clause 1 prohibited Congress from passing laws banning slavery until 1808. Additionally, Article 4, Section 2 states, in essence, that escaped slaves must be returned to their owners in the original state from which they fled.

In other words, the Constitution was far from perfect (luckily, it allowed for its own modification). And that’s why many historians consider the “second founding” during the Reconstruction era to be of equal or greater significance than the founding itself. The Reconstruction era that followed the Civil War saw the passage of three amendments that would forever transform politics in the US, both in terms of civil rights and in the balance of power between the federal government and the states.

In “The Second Founding,” historian and Reconstruction expert Eric Foner tells the story of how these three amendments—the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth—together represent the foundation for the continuing struggle for universal rights. The abolition of slavery, birthright citizenship, equal protection under the laws, universal suffrage, and the Incorporation Doctrine (which forces the states to honor the Bill of Rights) are all the direct or indirect result of these three crucial amendments. And yet the “second founding” remains less well-known among the public than the first.

This book is the remedy for that gap in public knowledge, and is invaluable for understanding not only the Reconstruction era but also the subsequent civil rights movements and the modern conservative attack on equality. Foner shows, for example, how talk of “state rights” has almost always been a cover for blatant discrimination. “State rights” has variously meant the right to enslave, the right to deny the vote to blacks and women, the right to violate the Bill of Rights, and the right to discriminate based on race and gender. As Foner wrote, “Before the war, for example, southern states adopted laws making criticism of slavery a crime without violating the First Amendment since these were state laws and not acts of Congress.” The real danger, in terms of rights violations, has always been greater within the individual states.

This book can also act as a good inoculant against conservative rhetoric that hasn’t changed in at least 156 years. The reader will be amused to find the same state’s rights and reverse discrimination arguments throughout the book. Andrew Johnson, for example, in his opposition to the fourteenth amendment, said, “The distinction of race and color is by the bill made to operate in favor of the colored against the white race.” As Foner wrote, “In the idea that expanding the rights of nonwhites somehow punishes the white majority, the ghost of Andrew Johnson still haunts our discussions of race.”

The underlying message of the book seems to be that any rights granted by the Constitution are worthless if not enforced. Constitutional rights can be ignored, distorted, or narrowly interpreted to deprive certain groups of equal protection and treatment under the law. But if we can’t even recognize when this is happening—and we don’t properly understand what the second founding was trying to accomplish—then we are all powerless to prevent a regression to discriminatory politics under the guise of “state’s rights,” “originalism,” and all the rest.

A fabulous and timely history. Foner is the foremost authority on Reconstruction and the post Civil War period. It is heartbreaking to learn how quickly the promise of ending slavery and ensuring voting rights for African Americans was thwarted by pure politics. To understand how Jim Crow began and how the federal government abdicated its responsibilities to make good on the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution is a shock. Shame will continue to adhere to our political leaders until they right these centuries-long injustices. No one can fully understand our history and our present political dilemmas until they read this book. Eric Foner is a true giant of American historians.

This book would be required reading in my US History class if I had one. Growing up in the 50's and 60's in Oklahoma City, I witnessed first hand segregated busses and other public facilities. My children and grandchildren do not know of that world without reading the historical source of those times. And the residue is still with us in gerrymandering to isolate and minimize minority districts and the current voter suppression efforts. The segregationists learned how to concoct election laws targeting blacks but using language that appeared neutral. Now the voter suppression folks are using that same playbook. My granddaughter should experience going out of town on a school sanctioned overnight trip and having her African-American friend and teammate forced to stay in a "black" hotel!

Reading Eric Foner’s work on the Reconstruction Era ought to correct any belief a rational student of the texts might have regarding the beneficial consequences of the Civil War and the operations of the post-bellum Supreme Court. Even the Civil War Amendments, which share in the authority that issues from the text of the Constitution of 1787 and the Bill of Rights, were neutralized in practice by a resurgent race politics in the South and by the mindless federalism of the Supreme Court. We live today with their mistakes and crimes, as Foner reminds us in this essential text.

This was a shocking revelation of how the Court went against wishes of Congress and neutered the 13/14/15th amendments and other post Civil War legislation, preventing former slaves from becoming 'real' citizens and enabling the Jim Crow era. The Supreme Court decisions that enabled/caused this were never taught in my northern high school history class, a bit of a shock. It goes a long way to explaining the root of grievances that were the basis for the 1960's civil rights legislation. It's a short powerful book.

What an excellent, detailed walk through the origins of our country’s Reconstruction Era amendments. This book does its best to present the facts as the facts, and at the same time provide thoughtful reflections/correlations to our present state. A great read for anyone interested in understanding how we collectively got to where we are, and perhaps where we can go from here.

Eric Foner is one of the foremost authorities on the Reconstruction in the United States so it makes sense that he would write a book on the amendments that came out of the period. The Second Founding is a deep dive into the creation and debates around the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. Rather than focus on how the amendments have effected American laws and society, Foner focuses on how the amendments were seen at the time they were created and what the debates around them were. By examining the debates in congress and the conversation going on around the country during the ratification Fonor shows that the people involved in their creation were fully aware of the implications of what they were doing and that these amendments constituted a restructuring of American society. This made it all the more tragic when the federal government decided to stop enforcing them at the end of Reconstruction allowing the former slave powers to become retrenched in the South and making the amendments effectively a dead letter when it came to protecting the freedmen for the next 70 years. While the book does not spend much time discussing the use of the amendments during the civil rights movement of the '60s, it does draw connections between them and argues that the goals of the amendments as viewed by the people who wrote them have yet to be fully realized. If you have read Fonors books before or are interested in this time period and how these three amendments that have had such an impact on American society came about, you will enjoy this book. While a little dry in parts, this book gives the reader a good understanding of a crucial aspect of our national government and history.

A prominent professor and historian of the Civil War Era has written this short book on three extraordinary amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Eric Foner writes clearly, with a depth of knowledge, and from an expansive viewpoint on the amendments that sought to address the profound racial problems that still smoldered (if not were flaming) in the aftermath of the defeat of the Confederacy.

Of continuing and current interest are discussions about why women were not included in the right to vote, how felons are treated for purposes of voting, and birthright citizenship.

Professor Forner is a liberal who is highly skeptical of those who favor a narrow interpretation of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. It is safe to say he would favor the views of Chief Justice Warren over those of Chief Justice Rehnquist.

All in all, a thought-provoking study that will benefit readers--both conservatives and liberals--with with an interest in how our Constitution is structured to deal with entrenched social ills, especially racism.

Noted Reconstruction-era historian, Eric Foner, in this short book casts the legislation and the incorporation of three Amendments, the 13th, 14th, and 15th, into the Constitution as no less than a second founding of the United States. But as the book shows, a second founding is more theoretical than an actuality. Instead of accepting newly freed men as equal citizens, rampant vigilantism in the South and calculated narrow decisions by the Supreme Court made certain that they would have virtually no standing in white-dominated society, if not subjected to horrendous violence.

The Supreme Court, supposedly the last resort for those seeking justice in the US, has been far more likely through the years to make rulings favoring society’s elites, especially the rich. It took the freed people nearly one hundred years after the Civil War to start to make social and political advances because of the sustained oppression of the legal system and other forces. Even today, some of the rulings of the 19th century still persist. Not sure that the book breaks new ground. The tortured rulings by the Supreme Court are hardly unknown to the curious.