Eric Foner

This is a history book that looks at the time period of Reconstruction in the U.S., following the emancipation of slaves.

I had hoped it would focus more on the social and cultural tidbits, but the bulk of the book focused on politics. So, I found it very dry, very academic. Unfortunately, it was also a fat book with small font, so even when I skimmed, it was slow-going. And I did skim much of it. There were a few parts that I found a bit more interesting and did slow down and take in a bit more, and it is a time I really don’t know much about, so I did learn a few things, but overall, it’s just too slow/dry/academic for me. I did learn that black people (men) were able to vote, and were even elected to office; they also sat on juries. Things actually did loosen up for a bit before tightening up again. I didn’t know this.… (més)

The Fourteenth Amendment was badly written. Its language of "no state shall" opened it up to interpretation as applying only to action by the states, and its reference to "privileges or immunities" left it vague how broad or narrow these were. In the Slaughterhouse and Civil Rights Cases respectively, SCOTUS gave it these narrow readings and thereby betrayed the hopes of the Republicans who passed the amendment through Congress and wanted to root out most, if not all, the vestiges of race slavery. The book is worth reading even for the final chapter alone, which explains how this happened.

Could the interpretive history of A14 have gone differently? The book indicates dissents and arguments that would have done so. Did privileges and immunities include all the Bill of Rights and more? Could the enforcement clause empower Congress to step in with federal authority where states refused to protect civil rights or implement equal protection of the law? Did the federal government indeed retain the power to enforce rights expressly or impliedly set out in the Constitution?

It was a disaster at the time, with white mobs terrorizing African Americans as SCOTUS forbade the US government from taking action against them, but I'm not convinced it matters much today. By back-roads and byways of the Constitution, America has enacted most of the laws that Radicals foresaw: a public accommodations law under the Commerce Clause, even a Fair Housing Act with a fairly sweeping disparate impact construction put on it, a racial hate-crime law under the Thirteenth Amendment badges of slavery doctrine (blessedly unmarred by a state action clause), a Voting Rights Act against racial discrimination under the Fifteenth, and eventually incorporating the Bill of Rights under the guise of deprivation of liberty without due process.

What is wrong with the federal government's role in race in America today is not so much what it cannot do, but what it will not do. For example: regulate federal elections to prevent voter suppression and gerrymandering, require public housing it funds to be sited in areas with good jobs and schools, mandate civil rights training standards for police forces it funds. No hiding behind the state action doctrine!… (més)

Lincoln moved on the politics of slavery very, very slowly. Even after legally liberating the majority of slaves with the Emancipation Proclamation, he continued to push for the completion of abolition by states instead of coming out strongly for the Thirteenth Amendment. He kept defending the whites-only reconstruction government in Louisiana until he began to hesitate just before he was assassinated. It was Congress and Republicans in the country who pushed for national abolition and did what they could to impose a fair settlement in the South. Lincoln should be recognised as a genius of political diplomacy for moving piecemeal towards abolition while keeping the border states on the Union side, but he remained to the last a cautious, compromising moderate on emancipation and racial justice. He wasn't a straightforward hero of freedom and he repeatedly overestimated the chances of voluntary abolition, but he was wise in his careful policies and he grew in his recognition of black equality. Perhaps a more radical president would have lost the Civil War: as he said of Kentucky (which rejected the 13th 14th, 15th amendments), to have lost the state would have been almost to lose the whole game.… (més)