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Was slavery over when slaves gained formal emancipation? Was it over when the social, economic, & political situation for African Americans no longer mimicked the conditions of slavery? If the Thirteenth Amendment abolished it in 1865, why did most of the disputed points during the Reconstruction ...

Was slavery over when slaves gained formal emancipation? Was it over when the social, economic, & political situation for African Americans no longer mimicked the conditions of slavery? If the Thirteenth Amendment abolished it in 1865, why did most of the disputed points during the Reconstruction debates of 1866-75 concern issues of slavery? In this book Pamela Brandwein examines the post-Civil War struggle between competing political & legal interpretations of slavery & Reconstruction to reveal how accepted historical truth was established. Delving into the circumstances, assumptions, & rhetoric that shaped the "official" story of Reconstruction, Brandwein describes precisely how a dominant interpretation of events ultimately emerged & what its implications have been for twentieth-century judicial decisions, particularly for Supreme Court rulings on civil rights. While analyzing interpretive disputes about slavery, Brandwein offers a detailed rescoring of post-Civil War legislative & constitutional history, including analysis of the original understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment. She identifies the perspectives on Reconstruction that were endorsed by the Supreme Court, as well as those that were rejected. Explaining what it meant-theoretically & practically-to resolve these debates with a particular definition of slavery, Brandwein recounts how the Northern Democratic definition of "ending" slavery was not the only definition, just the one that prevailed. Using a familiar historical moment to do new interpretive work, Brandwein renders a sociology of constitutional law, showing how subjective narrative construction can solidify into opaque institutional memory. Offering a fresh approach to the subject of original intent, Reconstructing Reconstruction will interest legal historians & scholars of constitutional law, American history, race & ethnicity, political theory, & the sociology of law.