Liberals, conversely, act like the new amendments changed everything. Writing about the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments—collectively known as the Reconstruction Amendments—Eric Foner in his book The Second Founding explains the profound changes brought about by the new rules. He says: They forged a new constitutional relationship between individual Americans and the national state and were crucial in creating the world’s first biracial democracy, in which people only a few years removed from slavery exercised significant political power…
