★ 05/06/2024

In this ambitious study, historian Sinha (The Slave’s Cause) traces Reconstruction’s ramifications beyond its span as official government policy from 1865 to 1877. She proposes that the 60-year period between Abraham Lincoln’s election and the ratification of the 19th Amendment comprised a singular and continuous battle between the forces of “interracial democracy” and “reactionary authoritarianism.” After emphasizing what a triumph for the democratic side of this battle the federal Reconstruction policy was—it secured civil rights for the formerly enslaved and enacted programs of land redistribution and public education—Sinha uncovers a fascinating array of the policy’s ideological ripple effects. Not only did Reconstruction inspire demands for more rights from early populist political movements—including the women’s movement and the labor movement—but it also provoked those opposed to these movements to adopt an “anti-government” political playbook similar to the one that eventually overthrew Reconstruction. For example, Sinha shows that activist homesteaders in Wisconsin, who wanted to seize Native land, used the same language to denigrate Native people as “dependent” on the government that was used to deride freedmen in the South. By 1920, Sinha writes, this anti-government ideology had become ascendent, forming the backbone of laissez-faire, anti-welfare federal policy. Her shrewdly argued study ties together many loose ends while providing propulsively narrated accounts of on-the-ground political violence and activism. It’s an all-encompassing new perspective on American history. (Mar.)

"Manisha Sinha not only has taken on this vast subject, but has greatly expanded its definition, both temporally and spatially. Her Reconstruction embraces the Progressive Era, women’s suffrage, the final wars against Native Americans, immigration and even U.S. imperialism in the latter 19th and early 20th centuries. She covers these difficult issues with remarkable skill and clarity. . . . Sinha convincingly advances her vision of Reconstruction all the way forward to 1920, when the 19th Amendment granted women’s suffrage. That landmark event was inspired by the marquee equal rights amendments of the Reconstruction era, which, Sinha writes, ‘bequeathed a legacy of political activism and progressive constitutionalism’ on the movement, a breath of air that gave America new life."

"[A] sweeping new history of what [Sinha] terms the ‘Second American Republic’ . . . [Sinha] has widened the lens to take in six decades of struggle and defeat in the ongoing battle between progressive change and reactionary retrenchment… [An] important and deeply researched book."

"Manisha Sinha’s magnificent account of Reconstruction fleshes out and vastly expands what W.E.B. Du Bois dubbed ‘abolition democracy.’ The Second Republic was never merely a southern project but a national struggle with global implications. Reconstruction’s defeat ensured Jim Crow’s ascent as the law of the land and the ideology of colonial expansion. The January 6 insurrection is a consequence of this defeat, which will become crystal-clear to anyone who reads this book."

"Studded with significant events, compelling stories, and little-known historical actors, The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic is a sweepingly grand political history that traces the multiracial quest for ‘abolition democracy’ while expanding our understanding of the stakes and afterlives of the Reconstruction era."

"A landmark. Manisha Sinha’s searing and revelatory account of Reconstruction redraws its borders, redefines its meaning, and restores its place as the hinge upon which American history turns."

"A big and bold book. Manisha Sinha’s The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic is marked by deep learning, expansive thinking, and compelling arguments. Readers will find it illuminating, challenging, and thought-provoking."

"With this remarkable book Manisha Sinha dramatically expands our understanding of Reconstruction, which she calls the Second American Republic.  It encompassed the entire nation, not simply the former Confederate states.  It ended not in 1877 but in the 1890s.  Reconstruction didn't fail; it was overthrown.  It was a major part of women's history, reaching its culmination with the achievement of women's suffrage, the last of the Reconstruction amendments, Sinha writes. Thanks to The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic, Reconstruction will never look the same as it once did."

"[A]n ambitious and expansive history of the tumultuous period known as Reconstruction… Sinha captures Reconstruction as a sweeping epic of lofty aspirations and impressive achievement by black Americans and their white allies. . . . Sinha’s deep familiarity with the abolition movement serves her particularly well. The abolitionists, as she shows, saw in the carnage of the Indian Wars an analogy to the racial animosity that was destroying Reconstruction. . . . vividly bring[s] to life the thwarted hopes not only of black Southerners but of countless other idealistic Americans as well, black and white, male and female, who sought a more democratic nation, one unblemished by racial violence and economic disparities."

"This is an account both luminous and tragic, which brings alive the violent defeat of Reconstruction but also the unremitting contest over the guarantees of democracy. In setting before us a sweeping history of Reconstruction—slave emancipation, the restoration of the Union, the dynamics of empire, the sovereignty of capital—Manisha Sinha has brilliantly transformed our understanding of the making of the American republic. This history holds vital meaning for the present."

2024-02-14
A nuanced history of Reconstruction and the ongoing resistance movements it begat.

Reconstruction, roughly the period between 1865 and 1877, is often considered a failure. Insufficiently enforced by the victorious North, it allowed an intransigent “reassertion of the authority of local white elites to act with impunity and defy the rule of law” in the putatively vanquished South. As Sinha, author of The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition, the cause of Black liberation was halfhearted from the start: Lincoln had not committed himself to a multiracial democracy, but was instead investigating schemes to resettle former slaves in Africa, the Caribbean, and South America, places that would become involved in the expansion of the American empire that began nearly the moment that Reconstruction was abandoned. Yet in the dozen years when Reconstruction was attempted, writes Sinha, allied causes formed. Abolitionists became women’s suffragists, Black as well as white, with one activist for Black rights, Anna Dickinson, hailed as having “statesmanship much beyond our twaddling politicians.” Like Lincoln, Ulysses Grant explored the prospect of colonization by the emancipated, with an eye to annexing the Dominican Republic; those abolitionists and suffragists in turn added opposition to annexation as well as taking up the cause of the rights of laborers. All came collapsing down with the rise of armed terrorism in the South in the form of paramilitary groups such as the Red Shirts and, of course, the KKK, which Sinha considers a forerunner of the “fascist paramilitary organizations that brought terror and violence to cities in Italy and Germany in the twentieth century.” Reconstruction’s failure ushered in authoritarianism, predatory capitalism, and an America that was “not a democracy but a racist, authoritarian state comparable to European colonies in Asia and Africa.”

A strong addition to modern studies of Reconstruction, bringing feminist and internationalist elements to the fore.