The Second Founding

The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments read as what they were: a refounding of the country, an attempt to write the promise of equality into the Constitution itself after the war that the promise's betrayal had caused. Foner shows how radical these amendments were, and how quickly the courts and the country narrowed them. The argument of the brand's own thesis, that the founding can be claimed and completed, runs straight through this book.

The historian who made Reconstruction central to how Americans understand their own unfinished revolution. His Reconstruction is the definitive account of the years after the Civil War when the country tried, and was forced to stop trying, to build a multiracial democracy. The Second Founding reads the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments as a refounding of the republic. He writes about the promise the country made after Appomattox and then abandoned.