"The Second Founding: How the Civil War and..." Topic

… Reconstruction Remade the Constitution

"The Declaration of Independence announced equality as an American ideal, but it took the Civil War and the subsequent adoption of three constitutional amendments to establish that ideal as American law. The Reconstruction amendments abolished slavery, guaranteed all persons due process and equal protection of the law, and equipped black men with the right to vote. They established the principle of birthright citizenship and guaranteed the privileges and immunities of all citizens. The federal government, not the states, was charged with enforcement, reversing the priority of the original Constitution and the Bill of Rights. In grafting the principle of equality onto the Constitution, these revolutionary changes marked the second founding of the United States…"

Main page
link

Amicalement
Armand

I've always looked at the American constitution as a set of game rules that we are still play-testing :)

The original designers placed very tough rules about add or subtracting rules without most of the players in agreement.

This also considerably post-dates the AWI period. The ACW had some results that we still haven't quite figured out how to address.

See, the British system of "making it up as you go along" has many advantages when it comes to evolving with changing times!

Mind you, at the moment….

Thanks!.

Amicalement
Armand

Good example is birthright citizenship…aimed primarily at former slaves and their descendants, but then hijacked by a activist judiciary and now look at the problems it has spawned.

We are off topic so I will be brief. The concept that a person born to foreign nationals living in the U.S. was alone sufficient to make them a U.S. citizen was recognized by courts even before the ACW. In the late 1800s it was recognized that principal applied as stated in the 14th Amendment to children of Chinese in the U.S. even though under then U.S. law their parents were barred from becoming citizens. If it was hijacked by an activist judiciary, it was hijacked very early in U.S. history.