The Second Founding explores the ideological battles that defined the Reconstruction era, focusing on the transformative period following the Civil War when the United States grappled with redefining freedom, citizenship, and democracy. The text discusses the core ideological contention between an expansive vision of universal rights, as promised by the Reconstruction amendments, and persistent reactionary forces that resisted these changes, largely motivated by entrenched beliefs in white racial superiority and the pre-war social order. The Reconstruction amendments represented a radical shift in American ideology—from a society that had constitutionally recognized slavery to one that now espoused universal liberty and equality before the law.

The text’s stance on these issues is clear: it supports the transformative potential of the Reconstruction amendments and criticizes the reactionary forces that undermined them. It portrays these amendments as crucial steps forward in the American constitutional tradition, fundamentally reshaping the legal landscape to include African Americans as full citizens with rights previously denied to them. The book is critical of the country’s failures, both immediate and long term, to fully realize the promises of these amendments, attributing these failures to a combination of lackluster federal enforcement, active resistance from Southern whites, and the waning commitment of Northern politicians.