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The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860 - 1920

By Manisha Sinha

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In this new book, acclaimed historian Manisha Sinha expands our view beyond the accepted temporal and spatial bounds of Reconstruction, which is customarily said to have begun in  1865 with the end of the war, and to have come to a close when the "corrupt bargain" of 1877 put Rutherford B. Hayes in the White House in exchange for the fall of the last southern Reconstruction state governments. 

Sinha’s startlingly original account opens in 1860 with the election of Abraham Lincoln that triggered the secession of   the Deep South states, and take us all the way to 1920 and the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which granted women the right to vote―and which Sinha calls the "last Reconstruction amendment."

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Within this grand frame, Sinha narrates the rise and fall of  what she calls the "Second American Republic." The Reconstruction of the South, a process driven by the alliance between the formerly enslaved at the grassroots and Radical Republicans in Congress, is central to her story, but only part  of it. As she demonstrates, the US Army’s conquest of Indigenous nations in the West, labor conflict in the North, Chinese exclusion, women’s suffrage, and the establishment    of an overseas American empire were all part of the same struggle between the forces of democracy and those of reaction. 

The main concern of Reconstruction was the plight of the formerly enslaved, but the fall of slavery affected other groups as well: women, workers, immigrants, and Native Americans. From the election of black legislators across the South in the late 1860s to the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 to the colonial war in the Philippines in the 1890s, Sinha narrates the major episodes of the era and introduces us to key individuals, famous and otherwise, who helped remake American democracy, or whose actions spelled its doom.

Henry Cohen, copy editor of The Lincoln Forum Bulletin, will facilitate the discussions. He has published about 30 book reviews relating to Lincoln and his era. For 28 years, Henry   was the book review editor for The Federal Lawyer. Henry is a retired legislative attorney with the Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress.  

Our sessions on The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic will begin on Saturday, March 15th from 10 AM to 12 PM (eastern time) and will be held via Zoom.

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New participants are welcome.             See note below for how to join.