Democracy Reborn: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Fight for Equal Rights in Post-Civil War America

by Garrett Epps

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“Engaging . . . With a novelist’s eye for biographical detail, Epps has written an . . . enthralling book.”—David W. Blight, Chicago Tribune The last battle of the Civil War wasn’t fought at Appomattox by dashing generals or young soldiers but by middle-aged men in frock coats. Yet it was war all the same—a desperate struggle for the soul and future of the new American Republic that was rising from the ashes of Civil War. It was the battle that planted the seeds of democracy, under the bland heading “Amendment XIV.” Scholars call it the “Second Constitution.” Over time, the Fourteenth Amendment—which at last provided African Americans with full citizenship and prohibited any state from denying any citizen due process and equal protection under the law—changed almost every detail of our public life.
Democracy Reborn tells the story of this desperate struggle, from the halls of Congress to the bloody streets of Memphis and New Orleans. Both a novelist and a constitutional scholar, Garrett Epps unfolds a powerful story against a panoramic portrait of America on the verge of a new era.

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All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review: 5 out of 5 stars

2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5 out of 5 stars

Excellent work. Part legislative history, part biography., 2007-08-18
Epps has written an outstanding work of biographical history centered around the villainy and political incompetence of Andrew Johnson and the colorful legislators and reformers who came together in the wake of the Civil War to fundamentally alter the US Constitution before the defeated South would have the chance to undo the North's military victory.

Epps' book really does read like a novel and is easily accessible to readers unfamiliar with the general historical background.

4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5 out of 5 stars

DEMOCRACY REBORN, 2007-05-29
DEMOCRACY REBORN is insightful, vivid, startling in its argument for the importance of the Fourteenth Amendment, and absolutely convincing. Epps has used his skill as a novelist to make his narrative, his characterizations of historical figures, and his analysis fascinating and persuasive. He demonstrates how near the South came to reversing its defeat in the Civil War by means of political machinations that would have left it dominating the Congress and presumably the Presidency. DEMOCRACY REBORN also shows how equal rights for ex-slaves (and black people generally) and for women were at first linked and then were set against each other, delaying the success of the women's rights movement for almost a century.

It's almost an insult to tell an historian that his book is as good as a novel. Epps's is better. Novelists tell made-up stories about imagined people; so do historians. As an historian Epps must probe especially deeply because historical facts -- no quotation marks around that word -- impose their constraints. Allusions enrich his writing; so do the parallels he points to, parallels with events and people in our day. The word rhetorical is often taken as a criticism. Epps's writing rises at appropriate times to be rhetorical in the classic sense. The best may be the book's last two paragraphs. The finest of rhetoric, they are moving and true.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5 out of 5 stars

Great Book, 2006-11-16
This book tells the story of the constitutional transformation wrought by the Civil War, culminating in the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment. The focus of the book is on the time after Lincoln's assasination until Congress' passage of the Fourteenth Amendment to be ratified by the States. Although this time period, and the story told in the book, has been the focus of many scholarly articles and books, this appears to be the first treatment of the topic for a popular audience.

Garrett Epps is a skilled writer and Democracy Reborn is very readable. He ably captures the excitement of the time. The book is also a fairly complete recounting of the roles of most of the major players in the drama. All in all it is a very enjoyable and educational.

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