Subscribe to Live at the National Constitution Center Rosen is also professor of law at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic. Jeffrey Rosenis the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization devoted to educating the public about the U.S. His newest book is The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution. The DeWitt Clinton Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University, he writes frequently for The Nation and other major periodicals. His books have garnered every major award, including the Pulitzer Prize for The Firey Trial, his study of Lincoln and American slavery.

His teaching and scholarship have shaped our understanding of that period. Eric Foner is the preminent historian of the Civil War Era.This program is presented in conjunction with the Center’s exhibit Civil War and Reconstruction: The Battle for Freedom and Equality.

Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, moderates. The Declaration of Independence declared the truth of equality to be self-evident, but it took the Civil War and the adoption of three constitutional amendments to establish that ideal as part of our fundamental law. Foner traces the arc of the Reconstruction amendments from their dramatic pre-Civil War origins to today. Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Eric Foner joins America’s Town Hall for a timely discussion about the history of the battle to inscribe equality into the Constitution.

The second founding eric foner