Library of Congress.Īs the first president elected with the help of Black voters, in his case, those already enfranchised in reconstructed Southern states, Grant was especially enthusiastic about the passage in 1870 of the Fifteenth Amendment igiving Black men the vote across the nation: President Grant and Vice President Colfax preside over a symbolic celebration of the passing of the 15th Amendment in 1870. But Grant comes up several times as a supporter of passing and enforcing Reconstruction legislation to protect the lives and rights of Black Southerners. For example, the 14th Amendment was narrowed by the Supreme Court to offer little protection for the civil rights of Black people but was expanded to offer increasingly wide protection to railroads and other Gilded Age business behemoths on the principle of “corporate personhood.”Ĭongress and the Supreme Court get more attention in Foner’s book than do presidents. And sometimes the amendments were diverted from their original purpose and twisted into directions that the Congressmen who passed them never intended. Those amendments were enforced unevenly even when they were new and were enforced with even less vigor in the decades that followed.

The 13th abolished slavery, the 14th established birthright citizenship for Black Americans and immigrants alike, and the 15th gave Black men the right to vote. What remained were the three amendments added to the Constitution after the war.

His latest book, The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution, focused on the most enduring legacy of a period that brought so much change to American society but also saw much of that change reversed by the era’s conclusion.Īfter Reconstruction ended in 1876, slavery was restored in all but name in labor relations throughout the South and Black Southerners lost many of the rights and freedoms promised by Union victory in the Civil War. The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution by Eric Foner, published in 2019, available in hardcover, list price $26.95 but cheaper used copies are widely available.Įric Foner, one of the leading historians on the Civil War era, has previously published numerous books on the politics of the era including the definitive contemporary history of Reconstruction.

Foner second founding