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

Join Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Eric Foner for a timely discussion about the history of the battle to inscribe equality into the Constitution. The Declaration of Independence declared the truth of equality to be self-evident, but it took the Civil War and the adoption of three constitutional amendments to establish that ideal as part of our fundamental law. Foner will trace the arc of the Reconstruction amendments from their dramatic pre-Civil War origins to today. Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, moderates. A book sale and signing will follow the program.
This program is presented in conjunction with the Center’s exhibit Civil War and Reconstruction: The Battle for Freedom and Equality.

[@sarahmcbeth9156]

I love it. Thank you for this rich conversation.

[@trizzybob]

58:05 there is only the enacting generation and the political fight (goals) thereafter fought.

[@derekf9017]

This shit dont matter bro.

[@TugHillGuy]

After Jeff introduced Dr. Foner as the leading historian on Reconstruction I had high expectations for the talk but after hearing Dr Foner mix historical facts with his own subjective conjecture and even some contemporary political bias, I wasn't particularly impressed by this discussion. Some of what he said seemed to clash with the mission of the National Constitution Center in that it was strongly partisan. He also had a tendency to not complete his sentences, even when he was saying some significant things and I felt myself wondering what he would have said had he completed them. Some specific things he said I question: 1) His short assessment of President Andrew Johnson of being a vicious southern racist is not consistent with what other historians have said about him. Lincoln fought a bit with radical Republicans after the Civil War who wanted to punish the states that tried to secede from the Union. Lincoln wasn't interested in retribution against those states as he wanted to bring the nation back together. Some historians say that Johnson ran into the same battles with radical Republicans but he didn't hold sway over them like Lincoln did. I don't understand how Johnson supposedly "set up these governments in the South" that established black codes (17:30) while he was the president in Washington. 2) The Civil Rights Act of 1866 was passed by the same Congress that passed the 14th Amendment and it said for a U.S.-born baby to be a citizen, the baby must “not [be] subject to any foreign power.” The same provision was brought into the 14th Amendment's birth-right citizenship clause and had the same meaning as it had in the Civil Rights Act of 1866. Senator Lyman Trumbull (the clause's primary author) explained to the Congress before it voted that “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” required being “subject to the complete jurisdiction thereof,” meaning, as he put it, “not owing allegiance to anyone else.” Senator Trumbull's interpretation was affirmed in the Slaughterhouse Cases (1873), Minor v. Happersett (1874) and Elks v. Wilkens (1884). I understand that even though the case of U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) was wrongly decided millions of people born on US territory from foreign parents since then have lived here productively and it would be wrong to export them. However, Congress could legislate that, moving forward, children born on US soil of foreign parents are not citizens of the U.S. Such legislation would inevitably end up before the Supreme Court where they could overturn U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark and return to the original intent of the Birth Right Citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment. I think that Dr. Foner's statements about the meaning of the clause are clearly wrong and his scholarship related to it appears to be weak.

[@clintbishop3660]

"We are nonpartisan." Brings in hyper-liberal historian pushing leftist talking points and discussing a document and an interpretation of it that he doesn't understand.

[@garynolen1677]

is this a democratic channel