It's something to think about and this book does layout the problems that Reconstruction had to deal with and the hoped for solutions that these three amendments would deliver.
Had there been no war and slavery died a natural death at the hands of industrialization we would probably have become an apartheid nation like South Africa and our race issues would be even worse than they are. That war caused the upheaval of our society that made the passage of these amendments possible. As I mentioned to a friend after reading this book it made me realize that, strange as this may sound, the Civil War was a blessing. The book then is really a Constitutional history that is shaped by the Civil War and the post war necessity of dealing with the consequences if emancipation. While it is about the Reconstruction Period it is really about how the events of that era affected our Constitution and how the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments became necessary. This is a book that will appeal to a narrow field of readers.
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