Pultizer Prize-winning historian Eric Foner tells the story of the battle to inscribe equality into the Constitution. Foner traces the arc of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution—the “Reconstruction amendments”—from their dramatic pre-Civil War origins to today, detailing how they changed our founding document and shaped American history. He sits down with National Constitution Center President Jeffrey Rosen.
This program was presented in conjunction with the Center’s exhibit Civil War and Reconstruction: The Battle for Freedom and Equality.
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Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University, specializes in the Civil War and Reconstruction, slavery, and 19th-century America. He is one of only two persons to serve as President of the Organization of American Historians, American Historical Association, and Society of American Historians. He has also been the curator of several museum exhibitions, including the prize-winning "A House Divided: America in the Age of Lincoln," at the Chicago Historical Society. His book, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery won the Pulitzer, Bancroft, and Lincoln prizes for 2011.
Jeffrey Rosen is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Constitution Center, the only institution in America chartered by Congress “to disseminate information about the United States Constitution on a nonpartisan basis.”
Additional Resources
- The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution by Eric Foner
- The National Constitution Center’s exhibit The Civil War and Reconstruction: The Battle for Freedom and Equality
- The National Constitution Center's The Drafting Table — explore how the Reconstruction amendments changed throughout the drafting process
This episode was engineered by Dave Stotz and produced by Jackie McDermott and Tanaya Tauber.
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