Abstract
Punish Treason, Reward Loyalty, Mark Graber’s landmark new book, upends our understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Republican Congress that drafted it. Although today we consider Section 1 to be the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, Graber shows that, at the time it was framed, Sections 2-4 were the primary focus. Motivated by the threat of resurgent rebel rule and the need to protect those who had been loyal to the Union cause, the majority in the Thirty-Ninth Congress set about crafting an amendment that would configure constitutional politics in such a way that secured the contin-ued supremacy of their own party and ensured that Republicans, not a revived Slave Power, would control constitutional meaning and inter-pretation. The novelty and utility of Graber’s approach becomes especially plain when placed alongside three leading accounts of Re-construction and constitutional reform: those offered by Michael Les Benedict, William Nelson, and Eric Foner.
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