 Hello everybody, welcome to Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs and today I'm absolutely thrilled to be speaking with a dear colleague and one of the great historians of our time. Professor Eric Foner of Columbia University and we're talking about his recent book, The Second Founding. And it's a fabulous book. The subtitle is how the Civil War reconstruction remade the Constitution. And it is a fascinating historical account but absolutely pressing for us today because I'm going to ask Eric whether we're in the third founding or not, whether we need to be, but certainly the lessons in the history of the second founding continue to shape American society in an extraordinary way. So Eric, thank you so much for being together with me in this discussion. Could I ask you a general open question? What is the second founding? Why did America need a second founding and how have you framed that in this book? And just to say for everybody listening in, Professor Foner is our greatest authority on this period of American history and so listen carefully and enjoy and learn. Thank you very much, Jeff. The second founding, the title is meant to sort of juxtapose the three constitutional amendments that were adopted right after the Civil War during the reconstruction period, the 13th, 14th and 15th, which we will go into in more detail. So juxtapose that with what we call the founding, the founding fathers, the writing of the Constitution in the late 1780s, the establishment of a national government after independence. Why did we need a second founding? Well, the fundamental reason is the Civil War, which upended the regime which had existed since the adoption of the Constitution. And we needed to come to terms with the consequences of the Civil War, the most important of which were the preservation of the national state and the destruction of the institution of slavery. The original Constitution had at least one might say recognized and protected the existence of slavery in the United States. The word slavery doesn't appear in the original Constitution, but through circumlocutions, such as three fifths of other persons or persons held to labor terms like that. The Constitution received significant protection in the Constitution with the destruction of slavery, all that was gone to use a modern term which perhaps is a little out of style right this minute. And here is regime change. That is to say the transformation of a pro slavery regime, which was created in as a result of the American Revolution, into one that not only was based on the end of slavery but on an attempt to create genuine equality, and racial equality in this country for the first time. So the one of the main points of my book is the Constitution we live with today is the Constitution of the second founding. It's not the original Constitution, the second founding fundamentally transformed our constitutional system or legal system or political system. And these amendments were not just minor changes in an existing structure. So, you know, so that's, but the problem is that most people probably wouldn't realize that the framers of the original Constitution are widely known and respected James Madison, Alexander Hamilton of course he got a boost from a Broadway musical. John Bingham of course who presided over the Constitutional Convention, the architects of the amendments of reconstruction are hardly household names James Ashley, Henry Wilson, john Bingham, particularly with the 14th amendment. Most people don't know who they are and yet they are just as essential to our constitutional order as the founders, right after the Revolution. So Eric, maybe your next work will be a good musical with a good rap between daddy of Stevens and Charles Sumner. I think that would be great I haven't had a call yet to take part in that but I'm ready anytime. But what's what's fascinating and what comes through very clearly we know that the Civil War reshaped both the laws, culture about race in the US, but also what the book makes very clear is that the Civil War fundamentally reshaped the relative roles of the federal government and the state governments, which was also a hugely complex part of the birth of the United States, how to put together 13 distinct culturally different colonies into one country. So what's the balance between a federal government and state about the government will go into that but you describe how much the issues of states rights versus federal rights predominate and we're still debating that question. Actually, literally, in these days, but I wanted to ask you before we get to the amendments themselves. This was founded on a verbal sleight of hand that also reflects a profound complexity and ambivalence. The founding credo is that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain and indivisible rights and among these are life liberty and they're in the pursuit of happiness. And yet, this was a slave country for much of the country and that remained central to the economy of the whole nation, and to the certainly everything about politics and the social structure up to. The Civil War and arguably until today, could you just say you've been thinking about this for for for decades and writing great books about this. How, how were these two views held in the mind of American political leaders from the founding fathers onward, because at the one moment that they would say all men are created evil. They were slaveholders themselves. So can you say something about the mindset is that an easy answer or is that a complicated answer or is that cognitive dissonance, because it is a kind of amazing feature of the country. Well, of course, you're right. I mean, I'd say it wasn't it was a real ambivalence and that many not all of course but many of the people who made the American Revolution and who made the Constitution understood that slavery stood in contradiction to the ideals that were being put forward, particularly in the Declaration of Independence. Some states took action during the Revolution to put slavery on what Lincoln would later call the road to ultimate extinction Pennsylvania passed a gradual emancipation law in 1780 Massachusetts it was even quicker that the court judgments just basically outlawed slavery. But on the other hand, there were plenty of states in the know every of every one of the 13 states had slavery. When the Revolution began, some of them moved in the next 1520 years to abolish slavery, but the places where slavery was most deeply embedded in the economy the plantation states from Maryland southward down to Georgia. They have no interest in getting rid of slavery and indeed, as you said slavery was the foundation of their economy. And I think people like let us take Alexander Hamilton who spoke against slavery on occasion. The main priority to him his priority was nation building and he understood right away. If you went to if you directly attack slavery you would never get a unified nation. It this had happened at the time of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson had included a condemnation of slavery in the original draft, although it was a little dishonest because he blamed George the third for slavery not the colonists themselves, but nonetheless, but South Carolina and Georgia said forget we're not signing on to anything which includes a condemnation of slavery so then you had to choose that we stick with our principles, or do we try to create a unified nation. They always chose the latter in other words anti slavery was not their number one priority, even for those who criticize slavery. There were other priorities which took precedence. You can get a constitution which doesn't mention slavery but certainly has deep protections for slavery, and indeed through the three fifths clause, gives the south far greater political power than it should have had by counting three fifths of the slave population when a portioning members of Congress electoral votes, etc. And you know, from the Revolution to the Civil War, just about every president was a slave owner. Not every single one but almost every single one. Those are the people who were running the country so whatever the intellectual contradiction slavery expanded it was thriving it was the source of much of American economic growth in the first half of the 19th century. And to get rid of it became more and more impossible. Basically, it became more and more entrenched some of the founders thought slavery might die out. It wasn't dying out. It was driving. In 1860, there were more slaves in the United States that at any other point in our history. It was growing. It was not tying out and sad to say I'm not a violent person. No one has ever suggested to me a plausible way of getting rid of slavery without war. I was going to ask you about that. The US. I don't know if it's fair to say or right to say the US is the only country that had to had to have a brutal civil war to end slavery. They wouldn't put it that way. It's never peaceful. Different kinds of war different kinds of, you know, of conflicts, the wars of the Latin American liberation and the first part of the 19th century led directly to the end of slavery and many parts of Latin the Cuban war for independence in the 1870s, 80s led to the end of slavery in Cuba. In other words, yes, the United States had a bigger war other than Haiti where you had a slave insurrection. But that's because slavery in the United States was far bigger than anywhere else. You know, they were. There were about 6 million slaves in the Western Hemisphere in 1864 million of them were in the United States. Slavery in the United States and dwarf that in any other indeed, you have to go back to ancient Rome to find a slave system as Trump as gigantic and important as the American slave system leading up to the Civil War. So I always wondered Britain ended slavery in the British Empire in 1833 I think or 1834. And also to my amazement, the Tsar Alexander, the second liberated the serfs at the same time as the US Civil War, both peacefully. But you're just not as entrenched in, I mean, in Russia it is actually pretty surprising that he pulled that out. The liberating the serfs wasn't quite the same thing as freeing slaves. They remained in many ways tied to the land and connected to their former owners I'm not trying to denigrate that that was a tremendous step forward for Russia. The British abolition, of course, applied to the British Empire. Another slavery was not embedded in the Society of England. Yeah, there were many people there who profited from slavery, of course, but you didn't have freeing the slaves and the British West Indies did not mean you were creating a not large new class of former slaves, as happened in the United States and what was going to be the status of those people. That was the key question that came out of the Civil War, and that the second founding tries to address what about these four million slaves, are they citizens. Are they going to have the same rights as the other Americans. What about the legacy of slavery, how can the country deal with that. Those problems didn't quite arise in the same way in Britain or these other imperial countries where slavery was out in the colonies not in the homeland. It is fair to say that during the Civil War itself. These issues were not in the forefront in the sense that probably. Well, even the idea whether this was a war that would end slavery was far from clear during much of the war itself. It became clearer and clearer as the war went on. Of course, as everybody knows when the war began Lincoln said this war is to preserve the union it is not to attack slavery. At the very very beginning many Union generals would send fugitive slaves back to their owners they ran away to seek freedom with the Union army and but that quickly stopped and you know, even though it was not the initial stance of the government to abolish slavery, slavery began to weaken almost from the beginning of the war and the Lincoln administration began taking steps slowly, small scale, then bigger, and then, you know, by 1862 Congress abolished slavery in the District of Columbia abolished slavery in the territories quickly, but in the confiscation acts freed slaves of Confederate owners who were behind Union lines and things like that. The attack on slavery begins, maybe a little earlier than a lot of historians have suggested but that the main point really is that the slaves themselves took the initiative thousands ran away to Union line they stopped acting as if they were slaves. They understood that the presence of the Union army completely changed the balance of power in their neighborhoods in the south and they in a sense the the running away of slaves force the issue on to the national agenda as the Civil War went went on. The need running away to the Union lines and then to enlist and to fight incredibly valiantly in the Civil War itself. Yeah, well Lincoln in the Emancipation Proclamation Lincoln authorized the enrollment of African American men former slaves. They were combat soldiers they had worked earlier as like, you know, transportation people in the in the army as quartermasters or even the digging, you know fortifications and all this, but now they were going to be combat soldiers, which was an astonishing given how big slavery was and how frightened owners were of the prospect or the specter of a slave insurrection to arm former slaves to fight their former owners. You know, Karl Marx who was living in London at this time. And writing for the New York Tribune. He said with the Emancipation Proclamation, a good stringer huh. Yeah, he said, now we have had the constitutional waging of war. Now we are embarking on the revolutionary waging of war slavery a target black men armed a completely different situation than at the beginning of the war. So that brings us to, to the founding of the second founding, and I'd like us, everybody to understand these three amendments because they're not a logical package that they're just laid before the nation okay now here's what we do. They are a remarkable, remarkable political battle and improvisation negotiation. Can you take us through the 1314 and 15th amendments. Right. Well, the 13th amendment seems to be the most straightforward that slavery can this abolishes slavery irrevocably through the entire country. The Emancipation Proclamation had freed many slaves but there were many slaves who were not covered by it for one reason or another. The 13th amendment is the final nail in the coffin of slavery. And it, you know, it's a remarkable as an economist you'll you'll understand you know you don't think of it this way but among other things. There was an uncompensated abrogation of the largest concentration of property in the country slaves as property were worth more than all the banks, factories and railroads put together. Well, and, and that property is just abrogated there was never going to be any compensation for the loss of that property or that doesn't happen in history very often actually. The 13th amendment raised big questions which it didn't answer the most important is what well what come, what does it mean to actually abolish slavery. Does that mean that the that black people will now no longer have all the, all the restrictions that existed under sliver example. Is he illegal to for a slave to learn before the Civil War right you couldn't they couldn't be taught to read and write. Well, does the abolition of slavery therefore mean the government has an obligation to provide education to them as part of the abolition of slavery. You know, and questions like that slavery was as one Congressman said was the sum of all iniquities, every positive every right was violated by slavery, did the abolition of slavery therefore mean that all those rights, the right to vote the right to hold the right to have economic advancement were now guaranteed by the government that well of course there was tremendous disagreement about that. And the question that is what does it mean to be a free American in the aftermath of a war so the 13th amendment abolishes slavery, and, but it raises all these other questions and as you suggested that this becomes the focus of a really titanic struggle between the President Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln after Lincoln's assassination he had been the Vice President, who was a deeply racist southerner, who really had no interest in protecting the rights of the former slaves, at all in a gigantic contest between him and the members of Congress the Republicans control Congress, but and, you know they didn't very quickly they realized Johnson's plan of reconstruction was to put blacks pretty close back to a status of slavery almost. And out of that, in 1866 comes the 14th amendment, which in a sense tries to answer the question okay what are the rights now that every American is supposed to have not just the former slaves 14 member doesn't say anything about race. It's race neutral and apply of course the former slaves are the ones on their mind but it applies to all Americans, not just black Americans. And what's fascinating in your discussion is the realization that the question of what it means to be an American citizen was never sorted out in the period from the Constitution up through. And also, I guess a fundamental point is that citizenship up until this moment was at most about citizenship in states, not a national citizen not a citizen of the United States. Yeah, yeah that's quite right of course. And if it was that was determined by the individual states. There was a general assumption that if you were born in the United States you're a citizen, if you're white. The Supreme Court in the Tread Scott decision right before the Civil War said well black people can never be citizens. It doesn't matter if they're born free. If they've been here their parents for you know their families for generations. Citizenships is for white Americans only. And that's, you know, one of the indications of how slavery sort of warps the whole understanding of American nationality this is a country for white men was the very popular political slogan at that time. The amendment begins with the words basically anybody born in the United States as a citizen. It sweeps away the dread Scott decision this is what we call birthright citizenship. And of course it's still hotly controversial today. Then it goes on to say that no state can deny to any citizen the privileges and immunities of citizenship but it doesn't say what those are. That's for future Congresses, but now all these citizens are supposed to have the same privileges and immunities. And then this is all the first section and then it goes on to say, here are at least a few of the rights no person, not just citizen person anybody in the country aliens included can be denied by a state. That's the equal protection of the law. Equal protection that's puts the concept of equality into the Constitution for the first time. The Declaration of Independence and said all men are created equal but the Constitution didn't use the word equal or equality, except in a sort of technical thing about what happens if you get this if two candidates get the same number of electoral votes. But the idea that the Constitution protects equality among American citizenship among American citizens is didn't exist before the Civil War. It did exist among the abolitionist movement to give what you're seeing here is ideals that have been put forward by anti slavery activists before the war and by African Americans themselves. Right citizenship equality before the law all those things which didn't exist before the Civil War now are put into the Constitution. Let me very quickly add that the 14th Amendment is like the gift that keeps on giving. It's always relevant citizenship we're debating that today right to vote it sort of contains a complicated compromise not giving black men the right to vote. But penalizing states that don't give black men the right to vote section two. And by the way, this has never been enforced and in my opinion should be enforced if a state denies to any group of men and today that would it would be anybody because women now have the right to vote. If a state denies that any citizen, the right to vote that state will lose some of its representation in Congress. So for example, let's say Alabama was 50% black 50% white before the at the time of reconstruction. If Alabama gave black men the right to vote. No problem they'd have the same number of congressmen as always. If they said no only white men can vote, then they lose half their congressman because blacks are half that now this has never been enforced. Right now, states are, as we all know, trying to deny people the right to vote trying to limit the right to vote. Shouldn't Texas lose a couple of congressmen if the number of people disenfranchised by their new laws gets up to a certain proportion. And as I say, Congress has never enforced it the courts have never enforced it but it's out there and might not be a bad idea to look at it again. I hope some lawyers are listening in. This sounds like a good, good opportunity. The speaker of the house is listening it, but then you go to the third section of the 14th amendment and that also has relevance. Anybody who took an oath to support the Constitution, and then basically engaged in insurrection or gave aid to insurrection is forever barred from office not holding office. There are a few candidates for that right now I wrote an op-ed about this a few did it back in January we have a present we had a president who certainly took an oath to support the Constitution. And then, at the end of his term, encouraged insurrection let us say, shouldn't he be disqualified from holding office that's a different that's not impeachment this is a different mode in the Constitution mostly at that time it was to turn ex Confederate leaders from getting back into political power. And then there's the fourth section, you might find this interesting no no jurisprudence on this but it's also sitting here. It deals with a bunch of economic issues for example they'll never be compensation for the loss of slaves. Those who bought Confederate bonds who loaned money to the Confederate government and a patriotic gesture will never get their money back those bonds are no longer valid. And the strange wording, the national debt of the United States cannot be questioned. What about right now they're debating whether to raise the debt limit, that limit. The possibility of the government defaulting on constitutional on President Biden could just raise the debt limit by himself in my opinion. The Constitution says you cannot have a default on the bonds of the United States Pelosi where are you you've got to remember this. All right, these are good point of this actually is, and then the fifth section finally says that Congress will have the power to enforce this, not the states, not the courts. Congress will have in fact all three amendments and with that that clause, Congress will have the power to enforce it and this goes back to your point Jeff about federalism this is a tremendous increase in the power of the federal government, as opposed to the states. The original bill of rights was based on limiting the federal government Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech that's the first amendment. Now, it's the states that are prohibited from violating the rights of citizens, and Congress shall have the power to enforce the 13th 14th and 15th amendments. There's a fundamental change in the federal system. And a lot of people don't in this world of jurisprudence of courts, don't quite realize that when they try if you look at Supreme Court decisions when they talk about federalism they go back to the original Constitution. States rights all that they do not talk about how the Constitution changed was refounded. Yeah was refounded and the whole balance of power within it was shifted. By the 13th 14th and 15th amendments. After after having had a civil war after all states had succeeded. So let's quickly move to the, maybe the most contentious of all of them the 15th amendment. Yeah. Well, that comes back down to the right to vote the as I said the 14th amendment didn't give anybody the right to vote. It had a penalty to states that denied any group of men the right to vote. Voting has always been under the control of the states in this country and it still is in many ways. We do not have a national set of criteria for voting. We have 50 different laws and regulations, you can move from one state to another and lose your right to vote, just because you've gone to another state. What we have in the Constitution is way of barring certain ways of limiting the right to vote. So 15th amendment says no state can deny to anybody the right to vote because of race. It has the right to vote, but it says, you can't deny them the right to vote because of race. And you can deny them the right to vote on other grounds without violating and in fact, you know that's what happened in the late 19th century when the southern states began to take away the right to vote from African American men. They didn't do it by passing a law say hey black people can no longer vote because that would violate the 15th amendment. They did it through poll taxes they did it through understanding clauses they did it through literacy tests, ostensibly non racial. Well this applies to everyone there's but in fact of course the way they were implemented was completely biased. So, and Eric you make the point very vividly and as you're making it right now that there were actually two versions of the 15th amendment proposed one said, you cannot bar voting on the basis of race. I'm saying you must, we must have voting on the following criteria, adult males and so forth and the positive variant was put aside. So we never defined what was the right to vote just what could not be done ostensibly. Yeah, the radical Republicans wanted a positive statement. And unfortunately at this time, no, hardly any members of Congress wanted to give women the right to vote. So all of these proposals are for men to the great annoyance and alarm of the women's suffrage movement at this time which protested bitterly that black men were getting the right to vote but women black and white were being denied. But yes, so, but, so the radicals wanted a positive statement. All adult male citizens have the right to vote. That would have solved a lot of problems going forward, but the problem is northern states wanted to keep control of the right to vote for themselves. My colleague May Nye has just published an excellent book on about the prejudices against the Chinese on the West Coast in this period, California, in fact refused to ratify the 15th amendment because they were afraid it would give Chinese men the right to vote which have been barred in California that Rhode Island had a separate qualification for voting for immigrants, as opposed to native born citizens they didn't want to give that up. This notion of states rights of state control over voting requirements doomed the positive 15th amendment and still is out there today as we see state after state are passing their own laws limiting the right to vote, and claiming that they're potentially biased now of course laws and amendments that courts have sometimes ruled that these things actually are intended to stop minorities from voting, but in fact, again again what all the Constitution says about voting is, you can't do this you can't you can't deny it now because of sex as well as race, you can't require a poll tax, but that doesn't positively say what other qualifications are legitimate in regulating the right to vote so if there's one after. Yeah, I was going to say that this is an incredible drama and beautifully told and really fascinating to watch these amendments to work their way through, and also to remind everybody in the US system, you need two thirds vote in each of the houses of Congress and then you need three fourths of the states to ratify so it's a very complex process with the profound politics at every stage, but these three great amendments are passed. And then this story turns dark again turns sour, and you describe vividly from the optic of the courts, how these amendments are then interpreted, and one can talk about the reality on the ground as well after the end of the federal occupation of the southern states in 1877, and the building of the new apartheid or Jim Crow societies, especially in the US South but with plenty of racism of all kinds to go around in the United States after that. Can you can you give us a big picture briefly it's of course a huge story of the next in a way the next 100 years of America but this this edifice is then profoundly undermined maligned limited narrowed worked around in in very deep ways. Yes, sadly, that is correct. We shouldn't forget though that because of these amendments, a period of genuine interracial democracy took place in the South and in the whole nation. We're for the first time in American history this is in the late 1860s and into the 1870s black men in large numbers voted for the first time held office hundreds if not a few thousand black men were now part of the body politic. It didn't really change southern life temporarily. But the fact is, as you say that over time created some wonderful reforms like the first school systems in this area, yes, which is amazing. First time you had public school state supported public school systems and just about all the southern states. As the phrase goes the Constitution is what the Supreme Court says it is, and all these amendments left open points of interpretation, as I said before, what comes along with the abolition of slavery. The court said not much this that this the 13th amendment, its purpose was fulfilled when it was ratified. No more slavery that's it we don't want to hear about any other rights about coming out of this etc. What about the 14th amendment. What are the privileges and immunities of citizens court said slaughterhouse case. There aren't very many just about all your rights come from the states, not the federal government, the 14th amendment didn't really change that. What about equal protection of the law. That doesn't define itself someone has to well of course by the end of the 19th century. The mandated racial segregation was viewed by the Supreme Court as not a violation of equal protection as long as these facilities institutions were separate but equal, of course they never were equal, but the court sort of turned a blind eye to that. So, you know, one can go down all of these ambiguous statements that cried out for interpretation and see how the court always basically adopted a narrow very narrow view of them. Finally, the 15th amendment as I said, by the end by the end of the 19th century Southern states had pretty much abrogated the right to vote for black men's Supreme Court said well and one of the Giles V Harris one of their worst decisions. Basically they said you know, if the white people of Alabama want to disenfranchise all the black people there is nothing we can do about it. They threw up their hands. The Constitution simply cannot be enforced in the south and it took a stunning thing that the court just said well, that's the way it is. It was even worse in a way because they said it's for the people of Alabama to decide these matters, but half of the people of Alabama had been eliminated from the discussion. That was the whole point of the debate was who are the people of Alabama is it just the white people or is it everybody and the court just threw that didn't even notice that that was a part of the they were accepting the idea that it's the white people who determine these things, not the whole population of Alabama. And then one other very important question which is relevant they all these things are relevant today. The 14th Amendment says no state can deny you this that or the other thing. What about private individuals does the federal government, what about mobs clansmen linchers, can they can the federal government go after them. Well the court eventually said no because this is what they call the state action doctrine that it's it's only bars official acts by the state governments, or to, or public officials that are discriminatory not individual, you know individuals if they commit murder and things like that that's not a federal offense. In other words you create it's another weird thing you create this edifice of constitutional rights. And then you step back and say well, if violent individuals make it impossible for people to exercise these rights. There's nothing the federal government can do about that that's a very strange kind of constitutional right that can be taken away from you by another citizen with a gun you know, it is it is stunning and I want to turn to this point that what I thought about to all of this was, or a foundation of it is the tremendous amount of racism at the core of American culture, or large parts of American culture so, whether it's the Supreme Court, saying, we can't do anything about it, or, indeed, the southern states finding their ways around all of this. In the end, the racism, not the slavery returning but the racism proved to absolutely be able to shape the real life, the real politics and the real economics. And interestingly, also, it shaped academia, and you discuss this and it's a stunning thing but I'd like to talk about how this whole period was understood by one of your famous predecessors at Columbia University Dunning, and if I am correct in understanding this the Dunning school or the Dunning interpretation of the reconstruction period when there was the period of multi racial open democracy was to say, what a horrible experience that was for America thank God we went back to a white led society. And that was, that became the historiography for at least the first half of the 20th century. Yeah, sadly that is, of course, correct. The school in a nutshell just said look, giving black men the right to vote was the worst decision in the history of American democracy black people are just inherently incapable of taking part intelligently and democratic politics, and therefore the ones, the clansmen and others who eventually overthrew these democratic governments by violence. You know, they were doing the right thing. So, so you, in other words, it was completely rejected as a model, the notion of interracial political democracy and that view dominated for a long, long time, these books were written in the early 20th century, but way down into the 30s. This was the dominant view among academic scholars as you as you say as well as the large part of the sort of general, general public interested in history, and this had a powerful political effect it's not just an academic debate over interpretation of this or that the message was clear. The South had the right to deny black people the right to vote. And if the outside, the rest of the country kind of forced them to make good on the idea of democracy, you'd have a replay of the so called horrors of reconstruction so this academic revolution was part of the intellectual legitimacy of the Jim Crow system, as it existed in the south for a good chunk of the 20th century and it was adopted by the courts law into the 1950s and 60s. Court decisions about the amendments would often cite the works of the Dunning School in other to suggest what was going on in reconstruction as late as 2004. And not that long ago, Chief Justice Rehnquist published a book about the, about the election of 1876 the disputed election which ended reconstruction. And in the course of that book he sort of said you know reconstruction was a disaster, it was a Carthaginian piece that is the north just, you know, imposing its will on the south, running amok destroying things. And if you have that attitude that that's what's going on in reconstruction, you're not going to have a very expansive view of what the reconstruction amendments were meant to achieve. When we went into lockdown and suddenly there was a bit more time for reading. One of the first things that I read. I think I mentioned it to you was Du Bois black reconstruction. Oh my God. It was one of the most moving experiences of my intellectual life I would say, but am I right. It was this great historian I think the first African American to get a PhD in Harvard History Department. But he almost singlehandedly, because he was only the only one took on this dominant historiography and this 1935 book is unbelievably brilliant captivating. It's a great book yeah you're completely right about that it's a great book, and it did completely dismantle the old Dunning School mythologies, but unfortunately it had a little impact in the mainstream universities it was fairly widely read actually in the 30s when it was published, and it certainly was read in the black colleges, but it didn't affect how reconstruction was taught in most of the major universities. And that wouldn't come until the 1960s it was the civil rights revolution, sometimes called the second reconstruction, which not only dismantled finally the Jim Crow system, but also, you know, also said that this is not a historical interpretation based on overt racism is no longer a tenable nowadays and reconstruction was completely reinterpreted, starting in the 1960s and it's going on today there's good work being done on reconstruction. And so Du Bois, yes, led the way but it wasn't until a generation later that that that the perception perspective that he was putting forward, which saw reconstruction as a major moment in the history of American democracy and the tragedy being not that it was attempted but that it failed. It now that is widely believed in the academic world but it took quite a long time for people to catch up with Du Bois. One of the fascinating things I think about academia and about history is the question who gets to write it. You know, when Du Bois wrote he was alone voice in incredibly brilliant voice. And one of the wonderful things about history today is that it's being written by people who a generation ago wouldn't have had the standing to the right wouldn't have been allowed to write so to speak, whether it's women or Native Americans or African Americans or other minorities. And it seems incredibly enriching and fascinating to see to have the story told in a different way by by those who suffered and never had the right to to express this alternative point of view. Yeah, no, you're completely right. We shouldn't though ignore the black colleges up until the 60s when integration took place and I'm not just talking about the South Columbia University had no black students virtually until the mid to late 1960s and barely any black faculty. I was an undergraduate and graduate student at Columbia I never had a black teacher in any course. I never had a woman teacher in a history course in my whole life. You know, the, so the, the, the cast of characters of the profession, the democracy of the profession has changed enormously not that all those people agree with each other there's the usual academic disagreement and changing of ideas, but it's a much more diverse group of people who are trying to come to terms with American history and as you know that's also controversial. It seems to me that this is the essence of this fight over 1619 and critical race theory and all the rest is ultimately the opponents of it like Mitch McConnell and others who say why are you stirring all of this up. It's really not about the substance it's about who do you think you are to tell this story. We already told that story. I don't think we want Mitch McConnell determining what is taught in every classroom in the country. Yeah, I agree with you I think that the, the redefinition of American history in a more critical direction has alarmed a lot of people who want a patriotic uplifting history they want a history where things begin perfect and then they are better and better you know, but so I'm you know there's problems with the 1619 project just like any other thing produced by human beings. But I think it much of what's in there by historians is now is pretty much what most historians think I mean it's not that many surprises in there to historians to the general public which hasn't been following the changes in historical interpretation. There may be some who find this project, you know, difficult to to swallow so to speak. But now we're at the point where states, as you know a passing laws outlawing the teaching of racism in the classroom. But the scope we may be heading back to the scopes trial of the 1920s, then it was evolution which was banned. We may see a teacher thrown in jail for mentioning the history of American racism, you know, that's what the laws that have been passed in several states seem to seem to suggest and that doesn't seem to be a very healthy thing for a, you know, thriving historical consciousness. When one reads all of your great books Eric, it does seem that this is one of the fundamental truths of the United States we are always at culture war, if not at hot war. We're always heatedly debating because diversity is extraordinarily hard to manage. It is and the ideals which are at the root of the American founding, perhaps, at least part of it of equality of liberty etc are always up for grabs that they're not defined in any highly clear way they are always a contested and groups and individuals are always seeking more equality and more liberty. And so these debates are endless and they should be endless because that we're not even though the second founding was a tremendous turning point in our political legal system. We're locked into the world of the 1860s you know, we have to apply those ideals to today and see how they, you know, what they demand of us not go back to the debates between Andrew Johnson and Thaddeus Stevens which are very important historically but don't really give us a blueprint for action in 2021. One of the another history that I read during our lockdown heavy reading period was. We'll have to get you a test from these books. Good. Absolutely. I'll be in seed by another colleague historian of yours, David Hackett Fisher. What a brilliant book. One of the things that he emphasizes. This is a cultural history of the United States, arguing that we have very distinct British cultures in America, we think of us as having the British cultural ancestry but he points out they're very distinct whether either Puritan or Quaker, or, or high country and back country traditions of the evangelicalism, but the words like liberty, freedom of quality means such different things in the cultural context as well so we debate the words themselves in such fundamental ways. Well, today, it seems a lot of people have expanded the idea of freedom to include the right to infect other people with exactly. So it's exactly freedom, at least liberty according to the great libertarian John Stuart mill does not mean the liberty to harm others. And that seems to be a missing element in part of our public discussion. Yeah, Fred. So this is absolutely phenomenal work. So important, so well told, and so fascinating. Let me encourage everybody to read the second founding. Thank you for being with us. For such a fantastic discussion. Ladies and gentlemen for the next book club let me invite you to a another historian and philosopher Corey Robin, who will be speaking about his book and we'll be discussing with him the reactionary mind conservatism from Edmund Burke to that will be on October 26 at 1700 hours UTC. So we will have two wonderful books in a row. Please join me in thanking Eric Foner for this marvelous discussion and this great book Eric thank you so much for. Thank you for having me today. Wonderful. Thanks a lot.