What is the constitutional legacy of Reconstruction?

0:04[MUSIC] We have the Civil War. It's in the crucible of the Civil War that so much of what had transpired in the previous decades really comes to a full fruition Black Americans take on this for the really important leading ideological, political role, antislavery, politicians, all of a sudden, basically are in the National government, and although the war does begin primarily as a war for union, influence of antislavery politicians and the Black Americans, and just the pressures of the war itself, within a couple of years turn the war into a war for abolition. It's out of all of that, that the reconstruction amendments, which are an attempt to both settle some of the issues that led up to the Civil War, so the 14th Amendment or at least the first two sections of it are a direct response to Dred Scott in 1857, which the ruling which held that Black Americans were not

0:53citizens of the country but then other parts of the reconstruction amendments are attempts to build something new out of what the Civil War produced and expand the scope of who is included in American politics and who is included in this society. I think it's interesting to note that out of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, out of the people who are advocates for them, you have people who would go on to be advocates for women's suffrage against Chinese exclusion, trying to answer the question of our Black Americans included naturally raises the question of well, who else is included as well.