The Broken Constitution

Lincoln, slavery, and the remaking of the founding document. Feldman argues that the Civil War did not merely test the Constitution but broke and rebuilt it, shattering the original compromise over slavery and forcing a new constitutional order into being. The book reads constitutional history as a live drama about what the country fundamentally is, and shows that the document we revere is itself the product of a rupture, not an unbroken inheritance.

The Harvard law professor and historian who rereads the constitutional crises of the past for what they reveal about the present. The Broken Constitution argues that the Civil War did not merely test the founding document but remade it, breaking the compromise over slavery and forcing a new constitutional order. He writes constitutional history as a live argument about what the country is.