History Commons^™

Commentary: 14th Amendment Laid Foundation Of Civil Liberties, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

They had just glued the world back together, and within a year it was threatening to come apart again.

That might sound like a description of the Arab Spring, or even the fall of the Soviet Union. In fact, it's what happened 150 years ago in the United States. [excerpt]

What If Abraham Lincoln Had Lived?, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

The lead .41-calibre bullet with which John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln on the night of April 14, 1865, was the most lethal gunshot in American history. Only five days earlier, the main field army of the Southern Confederacy had surrendered at Appomattox Court House, and the four dreary years of civil war were yielding to a spring of national rebirth. But by then, the man to whom everyone looked for guidance in reconstructing the nation was dead. [excerpt]

"The Most Awful Problem That Any Nation Ever Undertook To Solve": Reconstruction As A Crisis In Citizenship, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

Reconstruction is the step-child of the Civil War, the black hole of American history. It lacks the conflict and the personalities that make the Civil War so colorful; it also lacks the climactic feuds and battles, and dissipates into a confusing and wearisome tale of lost opportunities, squalid victories, and embarrassing defeats whose ultimate endpoint is the great American disgrace - Jim Crow. It lives with the short end of the historical stick for accomplishing too much, then accomplishing too little, with the result that almost the worst thing that can be said about someone in American history is that …