States could violate key Bill of Rights protections like free speech with impunity-and many Southern states did throughout the pre-Civil War period, banning abolitionist speech, with at least one state punishing such advocacy with death. The Constitution was silent on the Declaration’s promise of equality and on the issue of African American voting rights. It didn’t mention the word “slavery.” And, worse, various provisions-including the Three-Fifths Clause and the Fugitive Slave Clause-had increased the political power of the slave states throughout the pre-Civil War period. Recall where the Constitution stood 150 years ago today- before this Second Founding. Along the way, they passed landmark statutes like the Civil Rights Act of 1866 (America’s first major civil-rights bill) and, more importantly, secured a series of transformational amendments-the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth-which many scholars describe as the country’s “Second Founding.” While Stevens didn’t achieve everything that he wanted, he and his colleagues fought off Johnson and, in turn, redefined the meaning of freedom and equality in America. As Stevens explained in a speech before the House in April 1866, “Our fathers had been compelled to postpone the principles of their great Declaration and wait for their full establishment until a more propitious time.

On the other side, Representative Thaddeus Stevens and many of his Republican colleagues in Congress were committed to leading a second American Revolution.

And for several months in 1865, he did just that, pardoning thousands of Confederate officials and plantation owners, and standing aside while the former rebels seized political control of the South. Abolition aside, Johnson would leave Lincoln’s “new birth of freedom”-and the fate of the newly freed slaves-to the Southern states. The South had to renounce secession and accept the abolition of slavery, but little else.

On one side, Johnson was “for a white man’s government” and a swift return to normalcy. Read more Ī century and a half ago, these issues pitted President Andrew Johnson against congressional Republicans. The Second Founding On the 150th anniversary of Reconstruction, The Atlantic presents a digital symposium on the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, and their legacy.

The second founding by eric foner