The Second Founding

How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution

By: Eric Foner

Narrated by: Donald Corren

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 19th 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.

©2019 Eric Foner (P)2019 Recorded Books

Highly recommended

This is a valuable read for better understanding of history and the present. Anyone who reads civil war history will know of the 13,14 and 15th amendments. But this book brings their meaning to life.

Excellent Supreme Court primer

Decent narrator. Explains why the equal protection under the law described in the reconstruction amendments doesn't actually apply to modern law.

Everyone needs to read this.

We tend to forget the real sea change in American law represented by the 13th-15th Amendments - and the Supreme Court's evisceration of much of their force.

Excellent book - problematic narrator

I admit to being disappointed that Professor Foner was not reading his book in his distinctive and familiar voice, but determined to give this narrator a try. After he has mispronounced Chief Justice Taney’s name four times within the first hour of the narration, however, I am distracted and disappointed. Audible, if you won’t let historians read their own work, make sure the narrators are knowledgeable about the period, please!

Essential Reading in 2020

The legacy and impact of slavery and Jim Crow have cast a long shadow and Eric Foner gives us an in-depth and insightful look at the 13th, 14th, & 15th Amendments.