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The Nation That Never Was: Reconstructing America's Story
Our idea of the Founders' America and its values is not true. We are not the heirs of the Founders, but we can be the heirs of Reconstruction and its vision for equality.
There’s a common story we tell about that our fundamental values as a country were stated in the Declaration of Independence, fought for in the Revolution, and made law in the Constitution. But, with the country increasingly divided, this story isn’t working for us anymore—what’s more, it’s not even true. As Kermit Roosevelt argues in this eye-opening reinterpretation of the American story, our fundamental values, particularly equality, are not part of the vision of the Founders. Instead, they were stated in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and were the hope of Reconstruction, when it was possible to envision the emergence of the nation committed to liberty and equality.
We face a dilemma these days. We want to be honest about our history and the racism and oppression that Americans have both inflicted and endured. But we want to be proud of our country, too. In The Nation That Never Was , Roosevelt shows how we can do both those things by realizing we’re not the country we thought we were. Reconstruction, Roosevelt argues, was not a fulfillment of the ideals of the Founding but rather a we modern Americans are not the heirs of the Founders but of the people who overthrew and destroyed that political order. This alternate understanding of American identity opens the door to a new understanding of ourselves and our story, and ultimately to a better America.
America today is not the Founders’ America, but it can be Lincoln’s America. Roosevelt offers a powerful and inspirational rethinking of our country’s history and uncovers a shared past that we can be proud to claim and use as a foundation to work toward a country that fully embodies equality for all.
There’s a common story we tell about that our fundamental values as a country were stated in the Declaration of Independence, fought for in the Revolution, and made law in the Constitution. But, with the country increasingly divided, this story isn’t working for us anymore—what’s more, it’s not even true. As Kermit Roosevelt argues in this eye-opening reinterpretation of the American story, our fundamental values, particularly equality, are not part of the vision of the Founders. Instead, they were stated in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and were the hope of Reconstruction, when it was possible to envision the emergence of the nation committed to liberty and equality.
We face a dilemma these days. We want to be honest about our history and the racism and oppression that Americans have both inflicted and endured. But we want to be proud of our country, too. In The Nation That Never Was , Roosevelt shows how we can do both those things by realizing we’re not the country we thought we were. Reconstruction, Roosevelt argues, was not a fulfillment of the ideals of the Founding but rather a we modern Americans are not the heirs of the Founders but of the people who overthrew and destroyed that political order. This alternate understanding of American identity opens the door to a new understanding of ourselves and our story, and ultimately to a better America.
America today is not the Founders’ America, but it can be Lincoln’s America. Roosevelt offers a powerful and inspirational rethinking of our country’s history and uncovers a shared past that we can be proud to claim and use as a foundation to work toward a country that fully embodies equality for all.
256 pages, Paperback
First published June 24, 2022
190 people are currently reading
737 people want to read
About the author
Kermit Roosevelt III
10 books73 followersKermit Roosevelt is an award-winning author whose latest book Allegiance has been called "an instant classic" by Nelson DeMille. His previous novel In the Shadow of the Law was the Christian Science Monitor Best Book of the Year, the winner of the Philadelphia Athenaeum Literary Award, the New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Selection, and a national campus bestseller.
Roosevelt is a professor of constitutional law at the University of Pennsylvania. He has published in the Virginia, Michigan and Columbia law reviews, among others, and his articles have been cited twice by the Supreme Court and numerous times by state and lower federal courts.
Roosevelt is a professor of constitutional law at the University of Pennsylvania. He has published in the Virginia, Michigan and Columbia law reviews, among others, and his articles have been cited twice by the Supreme Court and numerous times by state and lower federal courts.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 64 reviews
January 7, 2025
Kermit Roosevelt III argues that it's a "better story" to disregard the Revolution and the "founders" and to speak of the new America beginning with Lincoln, the Reconstruction Congress, and the 13th, 14th, and 15th constitutional amendments. I don't disagree, but I can't comprehend why it took a whole book to make that argument.
February 9, 2023
This books got better as I kept reading. I was initially disappointed that Roosevelt III buried his lead a bit too much: he argues that the "standard story" of the US continually striving (and failing) to live up to its founding ideals--most strikingly written in the Declaration of Independence--is ineffective nowadays. Both sides, the 1619 Project and the 1776 Unites/1776 Commission, use this standard story and it fails. Roosevelt III prefers to use Reconstruction, when the US broke the previous Constitution and valued equality over unity. Rather than arguing about deifying the Founders versus finding contemporary values where they didn't originally exist in the US' past, he points readers to Lincoln, Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, and other giants of Reconstruction.
I agreed with his assessment, but I wish he had gotten there sooner and more concisely. His background as a legal scholars means that he spends a lot of time parsing language and adding evidence to his case to tear down the standard story, all of which is probably necessary but was still a bit of a slog for me. It would have made a nice New Yorker or Atlantic article; as a reader, it was a bit much for the first 75% of his book, even if it was necessary to marshal all his evidence.
That being said, his conclusion is stunningly solid and the final chapter was a tour de force of racial equality, showing how dealing with our present polarization as a country will require a rethinking of our national story, our racial history, and our commitment to a more equal future. I hold no illusions that this book can change the world, but it certainly could help some of us transcend the current history wars in a few small ways.
I highly recommend this book to those interested in racial justice, to educators seeking a better framing story for the US--think a somewhat more legal version of Jill Lepore's These Truths: A History of the United States or Jon Meacham's The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels--and to anyone seeking to built the US into a better country.
I agreed with his assessment, but I wish he had gotten there sooner and more concisely. His background as a legal scholars means that he spends a lot of time parsing language and adding evidence to his case to tear down the standard story, all of which is probably necessary but was still a bit of a slog for me. It would have made a nice New Yorker or Atlantic article; as a reader, it was a bit much for the first 75% of his book, even if it was necessary to marshal all his evidence.
That being said, his conclusion is stunningly solid and the final chapter was a tour de force of racial equality, showing how dealing with our present polarization as a country will require a rethinking of our national story, our racial history, and our commitment to a more equal future. I hold no illusions that this book can change the world, but it certainly could help some of us transcend the current history wars in a few small ways.
I highly recommend this book to those interested in racial justice, to educators seeking a better framing story for the US--think a somewhat more legal version of Jill Lepore's These Truths: A History of the United States or Jon Meacham's The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels--and to anyone seeking to built the US into a better country.
July 4, 2024
If I could give this book a rating of 10, I would do it. As the title suggests, it presents a whole new way of looking at American history. Rather than relying on the founding documents as our start, Roosevelt instructs us to discard that and look to Reconstruction.
The Declaration, we learn, was a document of separation. It was not about our concern for equality, it was about our gripes with Britain and why we must separate from it. Now that seems very obvious but clearly implied in it, if we care to look, is "us" calling out all the injustices we are suffering while at the same time, continuing to impose injustice on others- ie- blacks and Native Americans. The Reconstruction Amendments effectually destroyed the Founders Constitution and replaced it with a new one; one built on equality rather than slavery as the original Constitution had done. Moreover, the author argues that it was actually the Confederates who were fighting for the Constitution, not the United States (as Roosevelt prefers to refer to the North). It makes sense. Further, if, like me, you have always felt a bit uncomfortable with the Founders instilling inequality into the document, you can now get comfortable with a superior beginning for the country. That is not to say that everything is hunky dory and that we can relax, obviously it is not.
We still have the injustices and inequality in the country to acknowledge and deal with but it does give better focus to who our real heroes should be. (Not Jefferson and Washington). Roosevelt is not the first person to point out these things but from my reading, he had done it more thoroughly and satisfactorily than others I have read. There are so many quotes from the book that I could provide, but I will just give this book the strongest recommendation that I possibly can. It is especially timely at this time. One thing I must point out here is that even though the author is calling for setting aside the hero worship of the Framers, he does it in a way that does not offend and makes one want to follow his advice because it is so well grounded in research, scholarship generally, and expertise in writing.
The Declaration, we learn, was a document of separation. It was not about our concern for equality, it was about our gripes with Britain and why we must separate from it. Now that seems very obvious but clearly implied in it, if we care to look, is "us" calling out all the injustices we are suffering while at the same time, continuing to impose injustice on others- ie- blacks and Native Americans. The Reconstruction Amendments effectually destroyed the Founders Constitution and replaced it with a new one; one built on equality rather than slavery as the original Constitution had done. Moreover, the author argues that it was actually the Confederates who were fighting for the Constitution, not the United States (as Roosevelt prefers to refer to the North). It makes sense. Further, if, like me, you have always felt a bit uncomfortable with the Founders instilling inequality into the document, you can now get comfortable with a superior beginning for the country. That is not to say that everything is hunky dory and that we can relax, obviously it is not.
We still have the injustices and inequality in the country to acknowledge and deal with but it does give better focus to who our real heroes should be. (Not Jefferson and Washington). Roosevelt is not the first person to point out these things but from my reading, he had done it more thoroughly and satisfactorily than others I have read. There are so many quotes from the book that I could provide, but I will just give this book the strongest recommendation that I possibly can. It is especially timely at this time. One thing I must point out here is that even though the author is calling for setting aside the hero worship of the Framers, he does it in a way that does not offend and makes one want to follow his advice because it is so well grounded in research, scholarship generally, and expertise in writing.
September 20, 2022
This is a difficult but thought-provoking book. Roosevelt makes the same points almost ad nauseum, but that repetition may be necessary to drive home his central idea. Roosevelt argues that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, our fabled and revered founding documents, are seriously flawed with respect to the America that we should be striving for. They were not written for the aims of equality and justice, but for the aims of rebellion and unity.
The line we all know from the Declaration is that all men are created equal. This line gained mythic status through its use by Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. In the original context however, it was anti-monarchial. A king was not created as a special being. The line does not refer to "all men" as we might see it. It was written by a slave-holding, white British citizen for people generally like himself. Most of the signers were slave-holders. The Constitution further enshrines slavery with the 3/5 compromise and the fugitive slave clause, in which escaped slaves must be returned to their owners. The Constitution did outlaw the slave trade, but only after 1808, when the slave-owners would have a large enough breeding stock not to need further imports.
Roosevelt emphasizes the Declaration's aim of giving justification for rebellion by showing that the Confederacy felt it was being true to the Declaration's intent. This justification was emphasized by using many of the lines from the Declaration in the constitutions of several of the seceding states.
Roosevelt then argues that we should make the Gettysburg Address and the Reconstruction amendments, particularly the Fourteenth, our core documents. These all have their primary aim of equality and justice. The Fourteenth in particular makes anyone born on the United States a citizen. The Fifteenth then guarantees the voting rights of all male citizens of the United States.
While Roosevelt's proposal sounds wonderful, I cannot see it ever happening. Roosevelt does provide some general prescription for keeping the United States as a democracy with a better focus on equality and justice. He feels that anything the federal government can do to reduce racial inequality will make the U.S. a more just society. That effort seems fair. After all without stating as much in previous decades, the federal government poured more money in to help whites compared to Blacks. An example is that farm workers and domestics, majority Black occupations, were excluded from the original Social Security System. This kind of redistribution, again without stating the racial nature of it, should be foremost for the future. A curious parallel to this idea of making redistributions without reference to race and affirmative action is that the words "slave" and "slavery" never appear in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, despite their pro-slavery stance.
The line we all know from the Declaration is that all men are created equal. This line gained mythic status through its use by Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. In the original context however, it was anti-monarchial. A king was not created as a special being. The line does not refer to "all men" as we might see it. It was written by a slave-holding, white British citizen for people generally like himself. Most of the signers were slave-holders. The Constitution further enshrines slavery with the 3/5 compromise and the fugitive slave clause, in which escaped slaves must be returned to their owners. The Constitution did outlaw the slave trade, but only after 1808, when the slave-owners would have a large enough breeding stock not to need further imports.
Roosevelt emphasizes the Declaration's aim of giving justification for rebellion by showing that the Confederacy felt it was being true to the Declaration's intent. This justification was emphasized by using many of the lines from the Declaration in the constitutions of several of the seceding states.
Roosevelt then argues that we should make the Gettysburg Address and the Reconstruction amendments, particularly the Fourteenth, our core documents. These all have their primary aim of equality and justice. The Fourteenth in particular makes anyone born on the United States a citizen. The Fifteenth then guarantees the voting rights of all male citizens of the United States.
While Roosevelt's proposal sounds wonderful, I cannot see it ever happening. Roosevelt does provide some general prescription for keeping the United States as a democracy with a better focus on equality and justice. He feels that anything the federal government can do to reduce racial inequality will make the U.S. a more just society. That effort seems fair. After all without stating as much in previous decades, the federal government poured more money in to help whites compared to Blacks. An example is that farm workers and domestics, majority Black occupations, were excluded from the original Social Security System. This kind of redistribution, again without stating the racial nature of it, should be foremost for the future. A curious parallel to this idea of making redistributions without reference to race and affirmative action is that the words "slave" and "slavery" never appear in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, despite their pro-slavery stance.
December 28, 2022
About half done. Very good for redefining American identity that is progressive and inclusive. But it may cause a radical rupture with old ways of thinking for many.
Finished it. Highly recommended, It helps in a deeper understanding of the choice we face: the fascist, neoconfederate white united front of the Trumpsters, or the Third Reconstruction common front of Rev Barber, AOC and the Squad and all their multiracial, pro-worker allies.
Finished it. Highly recommended, It helps in a deeper understanding of the choice we face: the fascist, neoconfederate white united front of the Trumpsters, or the Third Reconstruction common front of Rev Barber, AOC and the Squad and all their multiracial, pro-worker allies.
July 31, 2022
An exceptional book, rich with historical observations and the author's wisdom. So much in this readable volume makes you pause and reflect about the US and the principles upon which it was - and was thought to be - founded. Dense with ideas, but not a dense read at all. The breadth of Kim's research and the depth of his insight are both equally awe-inspiring. Bravo!
August 6, 2023
This is an excellent text and will change how I teach AP Gov, The Declaration of Independence.
April 21, 2023
Treason and Terrorism are Now Patriotism
Kermit Roosevelt challenges the conventional understanding of the American experience. That conventional understanding, in short, is that American rights are found in the Declaration of Independence, fought for in the Revolution, become the foundation of the Constitution and come down to us in the present unchanged. Any perspective outside of the conventional narrative of continuous progress is dismissed as ideology such as the 1619 Project. This conventional understanding draws (or coopts) all Americans into the Founding project. We tell this story, largely fictitious, to promote cohesion and preserve unity but in doing so we sacrifice equality and liberty. The real revolution was the war of 1861 – 1865. The war of 1775 – 1783 was merely a war for independence.
The first misunderstanding is in what was meant by rights in the 18th Century versus our current understanding of rights. The so-called rights before which ‘all men’ are created equal were not meant as political rights, they were natural rights, not seeing this is a modern misunderstanding or perhaps a post Revolution reinterpretation which has become the current “American Creed”. When the Declaration was written, to be “created equal” by an act (or accident) of nature did not entitle one to political rights within a specific community. Nature does not confer political rights, only natural rights. We cannot get ethics or morality from natural law. Nature and natural law are at best indifferent to human wellbeing. The fundamental flaw in the American founding was the claim that we can derive ethics and morality from natural law. Nature only confers a right to life equal with any other life, not political rights. A natural right does not translate into a political right and inalienability only refers to natural rights, not political rights. The right to life does not translate into the right to vote. Just because people start out equal in a theoretical state of nature, it does follow that they remain equal or that such natural rights survive the transition into a political community. Simply stated, slavery was seen as part of natural order and thus consistent with natural law and the natural rights that derived thereof. The Declaration was never intended as a statement of universal human rights. This is why slavery was consistent with the natural rights contemplated in the Declaration and following through to the Constitution – this is the great defect – the Declaration said nothing to condemn slavery and the Constitution endorsed slavery.
Accepting slavery was the price of forming the new nation, the deal with the devil, no slavery - no United States. The Declaration was a declaration of political independence, not a statement of political rights. Political rights come with community and community is no guarantee of liberty or equality. These are the things to be decided by politics by those who are members of the political community. Native-Americans and African Americans were, by definition, not members of the political community. This is why racism is not an aberration, it is a natural consequence of the American founding which has compounded over time. By comparison, the 1789 French ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man’ was a declaration of universal human rights. As such, the American Declaration was correctly interpreted by Malcolm X as authorizing the resistance and rebellion of the oppressed African American community treated as an internal colony within the United States. Since the government has no duty to respect the political rights of certain members, those members have the right to dissolve the political bands connecting them to another. Ironically, this means the Confederacy also interpreted the principles of the Declaration correctly as containing their right to break away from the nation to protect their ‘rights’ which included the right to own and enslave another human being. We are better off in not trying to twist the defective Declaration to mean something it was never meant to mean.
In the American experience, political equality, at least in theory, came in stages. First, the Reconstruction Constitution of 1865 with the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments provided ‘Constitutional’ political equality to African Americans followed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Second, women had to wait for the 19th Amendment in 1920 to be granted this same Constitutional political equality. None of this political equality was envisioned in the Declaration of Independence of 1776 or the Constitution of 1787. Kermit Roosevelt’s claim is that our modern understanding of political equality and equal rights comes from the Gettysburg Address and the Reconstruction Constitution, not the Declaration of Independence or the original Constitution as much as we like to read our current values backward into the Declaration and the Constitution to maintain continuity just as we read positive law into natural law and just as many Christians read modern values into the Bible. The retrojection of modem values into the past is actually very typical.
Implications As I See Them:
Being the victim of racism must be a lot like inheriting a genetic disease. I have personal experience with inherited genetic disease, I call it genetic determinism. One becomes disabled due to a gene inherited from a previous generation. Racism is much the same. African American people are born with the disability of the racism gene meaning they are born to be victims of racism, inherited from previous generations of race-based hereditary slavery and bigotry supported by white supremacy and Christianity, both of which are grim, weird and grizzly human sacrifice cults.
The U.S. finds itself in an odd integrum period. Between two past epochs of American history, one superseded and one not yet attained. We are in a cultural integrum, one between the values (liberty and rights) of the foundation as represented by the Declaration of 1776 and Constitution of 1787 versus the values (equality and obligations) of the Gettysburg Address and the Reconstruction Constitution including the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. We still ground our national narrative on the limited scope of natural rights from the Revolution and ignore the superior narrative of the emancipation from the Civil War where new political rights were discovered and extended to all. Too many people still think we are the nation of the Revolution and the Founders. The Revolution made the nation safe for slavery and the Constitution codified slavery into the law of the land. The dots can be connected between this mindset and an event such as the 01/06/21 attack upon the seat of government at the Capitol building where carrying the Confederate flag was presented as an act of patriotism. Treason and terrorism are now patriotism. We are still in conflict over these two separate founding events, viz., the Revolution and the Civil War. There are many who want this to be a nation of the hyperbolic individualism, not a nation of community, the nation of Reconstruction and Lincoln. We are no longer the heirs of the Founders, but modern domestic terrorists prevent us from claiming the inheritance left to us by Lincoln in terms of recognizing and repudiating racism and oppression.
Usually, a nation has a single narrative story of its founding, purpose and values. We are caught between two narrative stories creating the great American Contradiction; a narrative of exclusive individuality and a separate narrative of inclusive equality, and it is convulsing the U.S. today. Equality has always been a contentious subject in America. At its best, it means not only equality before the law but also equity of interests in the community. At its worst, it is a demand for equality of attributes and outcomes. Individuality has never been a contentious subject in America. At its best, it means the liberty to chart one’s course in life without interference. At its worst, it is a demand for exclusivity and privilege. I believe the current American struggle is between equality at it best (inclusion of all citizens in the life of the nation) and individuality at its worst (privilege and exclusive control of the few over the life of the nation). A struggle between previously oppressed and currently marginalized minorities (based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, etc.) asking to be full participants in the life of the nation versus a privileged white, straight, Christian majority caste intent on maintaining exclusive control over national life and marginalizing any who are not part of the caste. The former look to the new founding of America as a result of the Civil War, the later looks to the first founding of America based on the Revolutionary War which overstated the injustices endured by the colonists and understated the injustices inflicted by the colonists on African and Native Americans.
The Great Inversion
The rights enshrined and protected by the Constitution are those of the states, not the people. The Constitution does not provide a solid guarantee of individual rights, the ‘Bill of Rights, notwithstanding. The equality of the states, the universal suffrage of the States is persevered, not the equality or universal suffrage of individuals by the Constitution. The states, not the people, are the parties to the Constitution. At the writing of the Constitution, the Federal government was seen as the potential threat to individual liberty and the states as the guardians of that liberty. Thus, the Constitution and the enumerated rights were intended to constrain the new Federal Government, not the State Governments. The current reality is the quite the opposite, it is the states that are the threat to individual liberty and provide the laboratories of tyranny; the Federal Government is now the important protector of individual rights. The problem is that this modern reality functions within an 18th Century framework designed to constrain and limit the Federal government but empower and protect the states based on the archaic understanding of the division of powers at that time. The original Bill of Rights retrains the Federal government, not the state governments. It is not until the 14th Amendment that the states are incorporated into the ‘Bill of Rights’ protections. The Reconstruction Constitution established the primacy of individual rights over state’s rights.
Kermit Roosevelt challenges the conventional understanding of the American experience. That conventional understanding, in short, is that American rights are found in the Declaration of Independence, fought for in the Revolution, become the foundation of the Constitution and come down to us in the present unchanged. Any perspective outside of the conventional narrative of continuous progress is dismissed as ideology such as the 1619 Project. This conventional understanding draws (or coopts) all Americans into the Founding project. We tell this story, largely fictitious, to promote cohesion and preserve unity but in doing so we sacrifice equality and liberty. The real revolution was the war of 1861 – 1865. The war of 1775 – 1783 was merely a war for independence.
The first misunderstanding is in what was meant by rights in the 18th Century versus our current understanding of rights. The so-called rights before which ‘all men’ are created equal were not meant as political rights, they were natural rights, not seeing this is a modern misunderstanding or perhaps a post Revolution reinterpretation which has become the current “American Creed”. When the Declaration was written, to be “created equal” by an act (or accident) of nature did not entitle one to political rights within a specific community. Nature does not confer political rights, only natural rights. We cannot get ethics or morality from natural law. Nature and natural law are at best indifferent to human wellbeing. The fundamental flaw in the American founding was the claim that we can derive ethics and morality from natural law. Nature only confers a right to life equal with any other life, not political rights. A natural right does not translate into a political right and inalienability only refers to natural rights, not political rights. The right to life does not translate into the right to vote. Just because people start out equal in a theoretical state of nature, it does follow that they remain equal or that such natural rights survive the transition into a political community. Simply stated, slavery was seen as part of natural order and thus consistent with natural law and the natural rights that derived thereof. The Declaration was never intended as a statement of universal human rights. This is why slavery was consistent with the natural rights contemplated in the Declaration and following through to the Constitution – this is the great defect – the Declaration said nothing to condemn slavery and the Constitution endorsed slavery.
Accepting slavery was the price of forming the new nation, the deal with the devil, no slavery - no United States. The Declaration was a declaration of political independence, not a statement of political rights. Political rights come with community and community is no guarantee of liberty or equality. These are the things to be decided by politics by those who are members of the political community. Native-Americans and African Americans were, by definition, not members of the political community. This is why racism is not an aberration, it is a natural consequence of the American founding which has compounded over time. By comparison, the 1789 French ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man’ was a declaration of universal human rights. As such, the American Declaration was correctly interpreted by Malcolm X as authorizing the resistance and rebellion of the oppressed African American community treated as an internal colony within the United States. Since the government has no duty to respect the political rights of certain members, those members have the right to dissolve the political bands connecting them to another. Ironically, this means the Confederacy also interpreted the principles of the Declaration correctly as containing their right to break away from the nation to protect their ‘rights’ which included the right to own and enslave another human being. We are better off in not trying to twist the defective Declaration to mean something it was never meant to mean.
In the American experience, political equality, at least in theory, came in stages. First, the Reconstruction Constitution of 1865 with the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments provided ‘Constitutional’ political equality to African Americans followed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Second, women had to wait for the 19th Amendment in 1920 to be granted this same Constitutional political equality. None of this political equality was envisioned in the Declaration of Independence of 1776 or the Constitution of 1787. Kermit Roosevelt’s claim is that our modern understanding of political equality and equal rights comes from the Gettysburg Address and the Reconstruction Constitution, not the Declaration of Independence or the original Constitution as much as we like to read our current values backward into the Declaration and the Constitution to maintain continuity just as we read positive law into natural law and just as many Christians read modern values into the Bible. The retrojection of modem values into the past is actually very typical.
Implications As I See Them:
Being the victim of racism must be a lot like inheriting a genetic disease. I have personal experience with inherited genetic disease, I call it genetic determinism. One becomes disabled due to a gene inherited from a previous generation. Racism is much the same. African American people are born with the disability of the racism gene meaning they are born to be victims of racism, inherited from previous generations of race-based hereditary slavery and bigotry supported by white supremacy and Christianity, both of which are grim, weird and grizzly human sacrifice cults.
The U.S. finds itself in an odd integrum period. Between two past epochs of American history, one superseded and one not yet attained. We are in a cultural integrum, one between the values (liberty and rights) of the foundation as represented by the Declaration of 1776 and Constitution of 1787 versus the values (equality and obligations) of the Gettysburg Address and the Reconstruction Constitution including the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. We still ground our national narrative on the limited scope of natural rights from the Revolution and ignore the superior narrative of the emancipation from the Civil War where new political rights were discovered and extended to all. Too many people still think we are the nation of the Revolution and the Founders. The Revolution made the nation safe for slavery and the Constitution codified slavery into the law of the land. The dots can be connected between this mindset and an event such as the 01/06/21 attack upon the seat of government at the Capitol building where carrying the Confederate flag was presented as an act of patriotism. Treason and terrorism are now patriotism. We are still in conflict over these two separate founding events, viz., the Revolution and the Civil War. There are many who want this to be a nation of the hyperbolic individualism, not a nation of community, the nation of Reconstruction and Lincoln. We are no longer the heirs of the Founders, but modern domestic terrorists prevent us from claiming the inheritance left to us by Lincoln in terms of recognizing and repudiating racism and oppression.
Usually, a nation has a single narrative story of its founding, purpose and values. We are caught between two narrative stories creating the great American Contradiction; a narrative of exclusive individuality and a separate narrative of inclusive equality, and it is convulsing the U.S. today. Equality has always been a contentious subject in America. At its best, it means not only equality before the law but also equity of interests in the community. At its worst, it is a demand for equality of attributes and outcomes. Individuality has never been a contentious subject in America. At its best, it means the liberty to chart one’s course in life without interference. At its worst, it is a demand for exclusivity and privilege. I believe the current American struggle is between equality at it best (inclusion of all citizens in the life of the nation) and individuality at its worst (privilege and exclusive control of the few over the life of the nation). A struggle between previously oppressed and currently marginalized minorities (based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, etc.) asking to be full participants in the life of the nation versus a privileged white, straight, Christian majority caste intent on maintaining exclusive control over national life and marginalizing any who are not part of the caste. The former look to the new founding of America as a result of the Civil War, the later looks to the first founding of America based on the Revolutionary War which overstated the injustices endured by the colonists and understated the injustices inflicted by the colonists on African and Native Americans.
The Great Inversion
The rights enshrined and protected by the Constitution are those of the states, not the people. The Constitution does not provide a solid guarantee of individual rights, the ‘Bill of Rights, notwithstanding. The equality of the states, the universal suffrage of the States is persevered, not the equality or universal suffrage of individuals by the Constitution. The states, not the people, are the parties to the Constitution. At the writing of the Constitution, the Federal government was seen as the potential threat to individual liberty and the states as the guardians of that liberty. Thus, the Constitution and the enumerated rights were intended to constrain the new Federal Government, not the State Governments. The current reality is the quite the opposite, it is the states that are the threat to individual liberty and provide the laboratories of tyranny; the Federal Government is now the important protector of individual rights. The problem is that this modern reality functions within an 18th Century framework designed to constrain and limit the Federal government but empower and protect the states based on the archaic understanding of the division of powers at that time. The original Bill of Rights retrains the Federal government, not the state governments. It is not until the 14th Amendment that the states are incorporated into the ‘Bill of Rights’ protections. The Reconstruction Constitution established the primacy of individual rights over state’s rights.
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March 11, 2025America is certainly in need of some help, but sadly these times are quite frightening. Certainly, wish there were more readers in this country and take what is happening seriously 🇺🇸 We have a Consitution, 3 Levels of Government, and a Democracy for a Reason. It is Sacred.
July 30, 2025
holy crap! this should be required reading for every history teacher and in every school.
October 20, 2023
For Roosevelt, the standard story of America's founding does not work. We need to look beyond to the origin of attempting to actually make good on the creed - the Gettysburg Address and the 14th Amendment.
November 15, 2023
Engaging but oversimplifies for the sake of a good narrative. When it comes to continuity vs. rupture: ¿por qué no los dos?
Read
November 11, 2023If you want to compare the Founder's Constitution to the Reconstruction Constitution (e.g., Amendments 13,14,15), then this is the book to consider. I've read about 2/3s of the book so far, and Roosevelt's in-depth writing about American values and democracy is quite remarkable. You'll get a chance to learn about two stories of American history, The Standard Story and the Reconstruction Story. Many of the present political actors on stage in DC push us back to the Standard Story based on the Declaration and pre-Civil War Constitution. I liked how he wove Lincoln's Gettysburg and a later speech with MLK, especially MLK's speeches and writing later in his life. They both rejected, at this stage in their lives, the Standard Story and realized that we need to not only reconsider the Standard Story but write a new story
May 19, 2023
this book makes a compelling argument that the story people across the political spectrum tell themselves about american history is not only wrong but actively harmful
December 30, 2022
“Stories organize the world for us; they put the stamp of meaning on the stuff of chaos,” Roosevelt says. Without a story, a person has no coherent personality and a nation has no sense of itself. Shaping a narrative is a matter of envisioning—how we see the pattern of our life, how we collectively make sense of our national identity. Roosevelt envisions a radically revised history, offering an alternative to the “standard story” that offers the promise of equality in the Declaration of Independence as the seed that grew into the 1787 Constitution. Roosevelt argues that the better and truer origin story is found in Reconstruction and the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments rather than the Revolution and “Founders Constitution”; that the true father of the nation is not Washington, but Lincoln. His book grounds and furthers the work of The 1619 Project, a view of American history that emphasizes the role of black Americans in actually establishing the ideal of equality, moving it out of the realm of Enlightenment theory into law and daily reality. Garry Wills argued in "Lincoln at Gettysburg" (1992), that by rhetorical sleight of hand Lincoln persuasively “remade America,” when he said that the nation was “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” and he envisioned the Civil War as a “test” of whether such a nation could have “a new birth of freedom.” Roosevelt uses his understanding of Constitutional law and American history to expand and undergird the insights and arguments of people like Lincoln, Wills, and the proponents of the 1619 project and fashions his own origin story into a persuasive and inspiring account that culminates with a plan for refashioning the way American history can be taught and how anti-egalitarian forces in American politics and culture can be overcome.
August 2, 2022
Not every book you read changes your fundamental assumptions about history or politics. This one did for me. A really insightful work, and one I will be referencing for the rest of my life.
July 8, 2023
Breathtaking; Phenomenal
This book explains, in simple, understandable terms, how and why American exceptionalism regarding equality begins its long, arduous and incomplete journey. The journey begins not with The "Founders", nor with the Declaration of Independence, not even with the Constitution in its original form. Professor Roosevelt painstakingly demonstrates through the Founders' own words, documents and actions, that "All Men Created Equal" did not have the meaning most Americans ascribe to it today when it was originally written and adopted; that meaning was borne out of the bloody Civil War, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, The Reconstruction and the subsequent Constitution AFTER the addition of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the original Constitution. At that point, the Constitution truly begins to become the revered "Freedom Constitution" (more Amendments finally make the document truly representative of "all people are created equally" -- and this is in spite of local, state and federal governments, particularly in the southern states (but, in reality, also the entire country), conspicuously utilizing legislation, policies and practice, to thwart this "new" Constitution's aims, led by an unholy triumvirate - the Executive, Legislative and Judicial (both state and federal) branches. Part of this "anti-freedom" strategy was to "reach back" to the "Original" Constitution for guidance, blissfully, blindingly and blockheadedly ignoring the the the country's aims to create a document which TRULY represents American values, aspirations and its commitment to "All Persons Are Created Equal."
This book is exceptionally researched; some people (particularly those like the underwear model at the 2016 RNC incredulously stating that in facing evidentiary facts to the contrary, his own facts, garnered from who knows where, are nonetheless "legitimate" because they are HIS facts," or a Trump White House "spokesperson" who gave the country (and, in doing this, gave 'cover' to the underwear model, as well as to individuals who, time and time again, will lie in the face of concrete, factual evidence) the "alternative facts" theorem which, as defined by one of political parties, means "lie, lie, lie, deny...and lie.) will inevitably question Professor Roosevelt's research because their version of American exceptionalism regarding equality differs from this book's thoroughly researched facts.
Some may just reject the message "out of whole cloth;" this country has recently experienced the phenomenon of individuals who, not liking or agreeing with a facts based assertion, will angrily dismiss facts based assertions 'out of hand,' with no evidence or facts to back-up reasons why they take their positions and/or make their assertions.
I fear that Professor Roosevelt's book will suffer similar "slings and arrows of misfortune" -- and, unfortunately, maybe worse. It is a brave, fact-based, easily fact-checked, reality-based, tremendously-researched historical book; it is also a masterpiece of truth-telling as to where exactly the "all persons are created equal" maxim truly came into play as part of a supposed "colorblind goal" to which most Americans say they ascribe to. Not all Americans agree, however, about how the country ameliorates decades and centuries of slavery and its progeny: state-approved lynching, Jim Crow, poll taxes, vagrancy laws, "contracts" and laws to keep former slaves working for their original masters on their original plantations, tremendous discrimination in employment, housing, wealth accumulation, access to courts, access to sue for grievances, voting (taxation without representation!), equal education pathwayhorrific violence served up by the KKK and White Citizen Councils murdering and terrorizing Black people (and other persons of color, etc., etc., etc.
This book explains, in simple, understandable terms, how and why American exceptionalism regarding equality begins its long, arduous and incomplete journey. The journey begins not with The "Founders", nor with the Declaration of Independence, not even with the Constitution in its original form. Professor Roosevelt painstakingly demonstrates through the Founders' own words, documents and actions, that "All Men Created Equal" did not have the meaning most Americans ascribe to it today when it was originally written and adopted; that meaning was borne out of the bloody Civil War, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, The Reconstruction and the subsequent Constitution AFTER the addition of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the original Constitution. At that point, the Constitution truly begins to become the revered "Freedom Constitution" (more Amendments finally make the document truly representative of "all people are created equally" -- and this is in spite of local, state and federal governments, particularly in the southern states (but, in reality, also the entire country), conspicuously utilizing legislation, policies and practice, to thwart this "new" Constitution's aims, led by an unholy triumvirate - the Executive, Legislative and Judicial (both state and federal) branches. Part of this "anti-freedom" strategy was to "reach back" to the "Original" Constitution for guidance, blissfully, blindingly and blockheadedly ignoring the the the country's aims to create a document which TRULY represents American values, aspirations and its commitment to "All Persons Are Created Equal."
This book is exceptionally researched; some people (particularly those like the underwear model at the 2016 RNC incredulously stating that in facing evidentiary facts to the contrary, his own facts, garnered from who knows where, are nonetheless "legitimate" because they are HIS facts," or a Trump White House "spokesperson" who gave the country (and, in doing this, gave 'cover' to the underwear model, as well as to individuals who, time and time again, will lie in the face of concrete, factual evidence) the "alternative facts" theorem which, as defined by one of political parties, means "lie, lie, lie, deny...and lie.) will inevitably question Professor Roosevelt's research because their version of American exceptionalism regarding equality differs from this book's thoroughly researched facts.
Some may just reject the message "out of whole cloth;" this country has recently experienced the phenomenon of individuals who, not liking or agreeing with a facts based assertion, will angrily dismiss facts based assertions 'out of hand,' with no evidence or facts to back-up reasons why they take their positions and/or make their assertions.
I fear that Professor Roosevelt's book will suffer similar "slings and arrows of misfortune" -- and, unfortunately, maybe worse. It is a brave, fact-based, easily fact-checked, reality-based, tremendously-researched historical book; it is also a masterpiece of truth-telling as to where exactly the "all persons are created equal" maxim truly came into play as part of a supposed "colorblind goal" to which most Americans say they ascribe to. Not all Americans agree, however, about how the country ameliorates decades and centuries of slavery and its progeny: state-approved lynching, Jim Crow, poll taxes, vagrancy laws, "contracts" and laws to keep former slaves working for their original masters on their original plantations, tremendous discrimination in employment, housing, wealth accumulation, access to courts, access to sue for grievances, voting (taxation without representation!), equal education pathwayhorrific violence served up by the KKK and White Citizen Councils murdering and terrorizing Black people (and other persons of color, etc., etc., etc.
March 16, 2024
Good storytelling, interesting perspective... but invites a "hey, wait a minute... " reaction.
This book uses over 100 pages and 5 chapters to fully reveal its basic premise. That premise is that the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments so completely remade the United States that it is a different country from the one formed by the Constitutional Convention in 1787.
That is said to be important because it liberates us from identifying with the leaders of the founding generation, most of whom were slaveholders. The ugliness of "the Peculiar Institution" was mentioned--e.g., that being the author of the Declaration of Independence does not excuse a 40-year-old man entering into a clandestine marriage with a 14-year-old girl who was also a slave (doubly unable to give informed consent). That is an easy sell if one already identifies with Union and not Confederate ancestors and believes that MAGA principle that nothing the President does can be considered a crime is irreconcilable with the principle that all should be equal under the law.
The "wait a minute" comes from the argument that, since the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments came at a time when the former Confederate states were on probation, it lowered the Constitutional bar for passage. This is compared to the way in which the drafting of the Constitution of 1787 went beyond the mandate of the Convention and the way in which that constitution was adapted was not in accordance with the Articles of Confederation then in place. Maybe... but nobody appeals in court these days to the articles of Confederation, while the biggies of the Bill of Rights (numbers 1, 2, and 5, for example) are still regularly contested in U.S. Courts.In the final chapter the author makes a case for a more robust application of affirmative action and reparations. The case for affirmative action, to me, falls apart at least in part because race in 21st century America, while not irrelevant, is much more variable and much more a continuum than it was in previous centuries, both because of immigration and because mixed families are more common than in the past.
The argument for reparations seems like a bait-and-switch. When I hear reparations I think of the never-realized scenario in which, after slavery was abolished, a former plantation owner was required to transfer ownership of his much of land and livestock to his former slaves. What the author ends up describing sounds more like a progressive tax code, in which all who have benefitted from inequality are required to fund a robust safety net to catch those on the losing end of that inequality (and, of course, driving the stake the rest of the way through practices such as redlining, etc.). Such policies are a difficult sell in the contemporary U.S., but framing them as "reparations" makes that task more difficult rather than less so."
February 28, 2023
Are we a country based on inclusiveness and equality? Or one based on unity? Do the words 'all men are created equal' mean ALL? Yeah, about that.
Roosevelt has a theory based on founding documents, and Civil-War era documents to show us our founders sacrificed inclusiveness for unity. For staying together. The compromises they made means that inequity and slavery are baked into our founding documents -- the Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederacy, and Constitution. Our founding fathers were slave-owners or willing to encourage slavery to build a nation. From the beginning we shrugged. This was our first Revolution. "Slavery was the price of the union."
Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, the Civil War, and the Reconstruction Amendments, the 13th, 14th, and 15th, to shatter the unity and begin to fashion an equality and inclusiveness. But it took force and troops. And it was easily shattered. Our Second Revolution. Unity failed, and we tried to establish justice.
He calls the next period, "Redemption" and that truly makes me cringe...redemption? Jim Crow? KKK? Black Codes? With the murder of Lincoln and the removal of troops from southern states, White southerners took back what they saw as their birthright...How can this be a redemption? Rights were eroded or taken back through terror.
Then a third Revolution? The Warren Court of the 20th century, the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act...reflections of the Reconstruction Amendments...
But...the myth of the first Revolution is strong, the triumphalist story is strong...while the rebels won the first Revolution, they nominally lost the second...but they keep the myth alive and fight back.
The pendulum swings violently back after the third Revolution...Reagan, Nixon, Trump. The Southern Strategy...We see Confederate flags being touted as 'my heritage, not slavery.' Ummm our heritage IS slavery. Baked in. Hardwired into this land. Roosevelt points out the irony of the Supreme Court Justice who most often cites the Revolutionary documents of the Declaration and Constitution, which prized unity over justice, is our own Clarence Thomas. Documents that deny his citizenship.
Are we approaching a new Revolution? Finally valuing justice and equity? It's going to be a fight. The new racist codes words of CRT and DEI show us too many in power are willing to fan the flames and base our nation's future on the deeply-flawed Declaration and Constitution, which ignored the rights of women and First Nations. And was just fine enslaving others, not as 'prizes of war,' but as labor to be exploited, tortured, murdered, for profit and comfort.
Roosevelt has a theory based on founding documents, and Civil-War era documents to show us our founders sacrificed inclusiveness for unity. For staying together. The compromises they made means that inequity and slavery are baked into our founding documents -- the Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederacy, and Constitution. Our founding fathers were slave-owners or willing to encourage slavery to build a nation. From the beginning we shrugged. This was our first Revolution. "Slavery was the price of the union."
Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, the Civil War, and the Reconstruction Amendments, the 13th, 14th, and 15th, to shatter the unity and begin to fashion an equality and inclusiveness. But it took force and troops. And it was easily shattered. Our Second Revolution. Unity failed, and we tried to establish justice.
He calls the next period, "Redemption" and that truly makes me cringe...redemption? Jim Crow? KKK? Black Codes? With the murder of Lincoln and the removal of troops from southern states, White southerners took back what they saw as their birthright...How can this be a redemption? Rights were eroded or taken back through terror.
Then a third Revolution? The Warren Court of the 20th century, the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act...reflections of the Reconstruction Amendments...
But...the myth of the first Revolution is strong, the triumphalist story is strong...while the rebels won the first Revolution, they nominally lost the second...but they keep the myth alive and fight back.
The pendulum swings violently back after the third Revolution...Reagan, Nixon, Trump. The Southern Strategy...We see Confederate flags being touted as 'my heritage, not slavery.' Ummm our heritage IS slavery. Baked in. Hardwired into this land. Roosevelt points out the irony of the Supreme Court Justice who most often cites the Revolutionary documents of the Declaration and Constitution, which prized unity over justice, is our own Clarence Thomas. Documents that deny his citizenship.
Are we approaching a new Revolution? Finally valuing justice and equity? It's going to be a fight. The new racist codes words of CRT and DEI show us too many in power are willing to fan the flames and base our nation's future on the deeply-flawed Declaration and Constitution, which ignored the rights of women and First Nations. And was just fine enslaving others, not as 'prizes of war,' but as labor to be exploited, tortured, murdered, for profit and comfort.
April 3, 2023
This is the best American history book that I have read in a long time. It is much better than Jill Lapore's "These Truths" which I also recently read. Mr. Roosevelt's book has finally given me a way to come to terms with our founding fathers. And it has made me rethink the comment that I made in my review of Ms. Lapore's book that the she didn't give enough credit to the framers of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution because even if they were only talking about freedom and equality for propertied white men, they at least gave us ideas that evolved into the values that we hold today and they should get credit for that. But in Mr. Roosevelt's telling almost the opposite is true. The Declaration of Independence was not about freedom and equality, it was about justifying rebellion. The Contitution was not about freedom and equality, it was about forming a more perfect union with a functioning central government, even if moral compromise was necessary to accomplish that. And the Bill of Rights was not really about rights; it was only about placing limits on what the federal government could do, not the states. The very limited ideas of individual rights and freedom that our founding fathers had were not the ideas we have today, certainly not the ideas being put forth at the same time in France in The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. Mr. Roosevelt argues that the Confederacy was the true heir of the ideas of Jefferson, Washington, Madison and Hamilton, and that it took the experience of the Civil War to give us the ideas of freedom and equality that we have today, which are grounded not in our country's founding documents, but in the Gettysburg Address and in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. So we need to discard Jefferson et al and quit making excuses for their hypocrisy over slavery. Instead we need to look to Lincoln, Sumner, Stevens, and Frederick Douglass as our true founding fathers.
That's a big step to take, and I don't see it being bought into right away by most American historians or by the mass of our population that so deeply believes the myths around our nation's founding. But I'm sold. It all makes sense. It's the first time that I have found a way of looking at American history that addresses the contradictions head on and weaves together the disparate strands in a satisfying way. Mr. Roosevelt's approach doesn't require us to get rid of heroes or to discard our values or to become cynics about our country. He only asks us to refocus our gaze onto the second American revolution where the values that we hold today were actually forged.
That's a big step to take, and I don't see it being bought into right away by most American historians or by the mass of our population that so deeply believes the myths around our nation's founding. But I'm sold. It all makes sense. It's the first time that I have found a way of looking at American history that addresses the contradictions head on and weaves together the disparate strands in a satisfying way. Mr. Roosevelt's approach doesn't require us to get rid of heroes or to discard our values or to become cynics about our country. He only asks us to refocus our gaze onto the second American revolution where the values that we hold today were actually forged.
August 16, 2023
What an interesting book! I definitely recommend reading it slowly and pausing to consider the arguments about how the standard story is untrue and harmful. I particularly enjoyed the following points:
- governments (especially those that are exclusive or individualistic) protect insiders and will not ever infringe upon insiders’ rights to protect outsiders
- the declaration was about independence and not the ideals of liberty and “all men are created equal”. It was a justification for the colonists to overthrow a (what seemed to them) oppressive government
- the constitution does not protect our individual rights. It exists to bring states out of nature, not individuals, and is a compromise between states (often pro-slavery) to create a federal government
- the declaration actually sides with the Confederacy. Lincoln is against the declaration in that he uses military force to prevent states from leaving; the confederacy actually justifies secession with arguments of independence from the declaration
- almost all civil liberties we think of today as protected by the Constitution are protected by Reconstruction Amendments and incorporation under 14A
-the BOR says nothing about what individuals can do to each other
- the Founders’ America was destroyed with the Civil War and the America we have today is actually built from Lincoln, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Gettysburg Address. In an effort to build ethos, he and other abolitionists cite the Declaration and change it’s meaning from being about independence to interpreting it as supporting equality
- racial resentment is used to cut government support of programs and racism is closely tied to economic gaps
- slavery is the reason why the US is not as progressive as other countries in terms of health care, public policy, social programs
-Justice and unity are not the same thing, and too often people like Reagan, colorblind bystanders, and even Lincoln himself will prioritize unity over Justice
I’m not quite sure I agree with Roosevelt that the standard story can be replaced with the Reconstruction story or that all problems wholly stem from slavery. I think the standard story will stick around in classrooms and politics for a long time because of the historical ethos it offers to the wielder and the politicians’ desire to appeal and unify bases. I like the quotes in his book that “American history is not steady success and continuity” (p 210) and “what makes us American - our deepest ideal - is that we keep trying” (p. 205). While overtly hopeful and vague, these two sentences capture how this book is able to critique problems yet still lead with a hopeful tone.
- governments (especially those that are exclusive or individualistic) protect insiders and will not ever infringe upon insiders’ rights to protect outsiders
- the declaration was about independence and not the ideals of liberty and “all men are created equal”. It was a justification for the colonists to overthrow a (what seemed to them) oppressive government
- the constitution does not protect our individual rights. It exists to bring states out of nature, not individuals, and is a compromise between states (often pro-slavery) to create a federal government
- the declaration actually sides with the Confederacy. Lincoln is against the declaration in that he uses military force to prevent states from leaving; the confederacy actually justifies secession with arguments of independence from the declaration
- almost all civil liberties we think of today as protected by the Constitution are protected by Reconstruction Amendments and incorporation under 14A
-the BOR says nothing about what individuals can do to each other
- the Founders’ America was destroyed with the Civil War and the America we have today is actually built from Lincoln, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Gettysburg Address. In an effort to build ethos, he and other abolitionists cite the Declaration and change it’s meaning from being about independence to interpreting it as supporting equality
- racial resentment is used to cut government support of programs and racism is closely tied to economic gaps
- slavery is the reason why the US is not as progressive as other countries in terms of health care, public policy, social programs
-Justice and unity are not the same thing, and too often people like Reagan, colorblind bystanders, and even Lincoln himself will prioritize unity over Justice
I’m not quite sure I agree with Roosevelt that the standard story can be replaced with the Reconstruction story or that all problems wholly stem from slavery. I think the standard story will stick around in classrooms and politics for a long time because of the historical ethos it offers to the wielder and the politicians’ desire to appeal and unify bases. I like the quotes in his book that “American history is not steady success and continuity” (p 210) and “what makes us American - our deepest ideal - is that we keep trying” (p. 205). While overtly hopeful and vague, these two sentences capture how this book is able to critique problems yet still lead with a hopeful tone.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 4, 2025
This is a short book that presents a very interesting thesis, one that is especially relevant on the eve of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (I write this in December, 2025). The author, who is the great, great grandson of Theodore Roosevelt, believes that the "standard" received view of the birth of the United States, and the one that will be celebrated next year, is very flawed. Indeed, he claims that both the Declaration and the Constitution had as their primary motivation the goal of unity, not democracy or equality, despite the famous passage that proclaimed "all men are created equal." In fact, for the first time in my life I read what I consider to be a very valid and convincing explanation of how a slaveowner (Jefferson) could have written those words and how the dozens of slaveowners at the Continental Congress could have signed it. The author's explanation is that the Declaration was a political document whose purposed was the justify separating from the mother country. The "equality" of which Jefferson wrote was a "political" equality that exists in the "state of nature" into which we are all born. In that state of nature, we are all "equal" and no one has a God-given right to rule over others. Jefferson did not believe that Africans and their descendants were the "equals" of Europeans and their descendants. In fact, he believed that African-Americans were "outsiders" who had no claim at all to the rights to which European-Americans were entitled. With this belief in mind, it was no wonder that the Constitution was embedded with subtle, and not-so-subtle, protections of the institution of slavery. According to the book, the infamous Dred Scott Supreme Court Case of 1857 was correctly decided if the reference points were the Declaration and the Founders' Constitution. Mr. Roosevelt believes that the true birth of our current nation actually took place during the Civil War era, in Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and with the ratification of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. It is difficult for me to find flaws in the author's analysis, although I don't believe that he will be invited to too many 4th of July celebrations next summer. I deducted one star from my rating because the book, at times, got a little too legalistic for my tastes, which wasn't surprising, considering that the author is a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. But this is a minor quibble about this quality book. I highly recommend it.
October 10, 2023
The Nation That Never Was: Reconstructing America's Story. Kermit Roosevelt III. University of Chicago Press, 2022, 256 pages.
If you are interested in reading a thoughtful and thought-provoking take on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the true character of the United States, The Nation That Never Was may be a book for you. It is challenging, but not in a difficult-to read, legal-ese, constitutional-theorists-having-a-scotch-in-a-wood-paneled-library-esoteric-debate kind of way. It challenges what Americans have been taught and think they know about the founding of America and its two most important founding documents, and it challenges our ideas about American ideals, but it's written in very accessible language.
Kermit Roosevelt III is an American author, lawyer, constitutional scholar, and a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a great-great-grandson of United States President Theodore Roosevelt and a distant cousin of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
From the beginning, Roosevelt describes the American dilemma: Do we acknowledge and address the shortcomings of America's history and move forward together from there? Or do we continue perpetuating the "standard" story of the founding, created as part of the effort to build a nation but not truthful and accurate, and simply erase the negative elements? In the book, he thoroughly examines the "standard" simplistic and sentimentalized story we've all learned (and taught) and breaks it down, pointing out exaggerations, truths, and untruths. Then he lays out a new way of looking at America's story. That new story is that we should define our national identity around the promises, challenges, and aspirations (some still unachieved) of Reconstruction instead of the founding period. Like Reconstruction historian Eric Foner, he lays out the case for 1865, rather than 1776 or 1619, as modern America's starting point. However, he also distinguishes and separates his argument from those, like Foner, who have called Reconstruction "the Second Founding."
I don't agree with everything Roosevelt wrote, but it was definitely worth reading and thinking about.
If you are interested in reading a thoughtful and thought-provoking take on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the true character of the United States, The Nation That Never Was may be a book for you. It is challenging, but not in a difficult-to read, legal-ese, constitutional-theorists-having-a-scotch-in-a-wood-paneled-library-esoteric-debate kind of way. It challenges what Americans have been taught and think they know about the founding of America and its two most important founding documents, and it challenges our ideas about American ideals, but it's written in very accessible language.
Kermit Roosevelt III is an American author, lawyer, constitutional scholar, and a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a great-great-grandson of United States President Theodore Roosevelt and a distant cousin of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
From the beginning, Roosevelt describes the American dilemma: Do we acknowledge and address the shortcomings of America's history and move forward together from there? Or do we continue perpetuating the "standard" story of the founding, created as part of the effort to build a nation but not truthful and accurate, and simply erase the negative elements? In the book, he thoroughly examines the "standard" simplistic and sentimentalized story we've all learned (and taught) and breaks it down, pointing out exaggerations, truths, and untruths. Then he lays out a new way of looking at America's story. That new story is that we should define our national identity around the promises, challenges, and aspirations (some still unachieved) of Reconstruction instead of the founding period. Like Reconstruction historian Eric Foner, he lays out the case for 1865, rather than 1776 or 1619, as modern America's starting point. However, he also distinguishes and separates his argument from those, like Foner, who have called Reconstruction "the Second Founding."
I don't agree with everything Roosevelt wrote, but it was definitely worth reading and thinking about.
May 16, 2023
From the time that Americans are in kindergarten and continuing through grade school, we are taught the standard story of American history. George Washington and the cherry tree....I cannot tell a lie....Lincoln freed the slaves....etc etc. However, in "The Nation that Never Was: Reconstructing America's Story", the author, Kermit Roosevelt III, asks us to think about American history in a different way, a more accurate way. He asks us to reconsider the standard story we are taught and consider it in context of historical events.
When asked to think about America in a different way, some may cry "Revisionist History!" But I encourage people to read and wrestle with the concepts presented here. Indeed, for any students of American history, this book is a must-read. Roosevelt carefully walks the reader through his logic, backing up each claim with convincing historical evidence. As a reader, you might not agree with what you read here, but it will certainly make you think, which is one of the main points. Americans need to think more about American history and its implications. And this book is a great tool to begin that work.
The work of creating and/or revising a nation's story takes many years, but Roosevelt argues it is worth the sometimes-arduous journey. Agree or disagree, I believe Roosevelt's ideas should be heard and evaluated. Great books are not ones that you necessarily agree with, but are the ones that are discussed. And I believe this is definitely one of the better books.
When asked to think about America in a different way, some may cry "Revisionist History!" But I encourage people to read and wrestle with the concepts presented here. Indeed, for any students of American history, this book is a must-read. Roosevelt carefully walks the reader through his logic, backing up each claim with convincing historical evidence. As a reader, you might not agree with what you read here, but it will certainly make you think, which is one of the main points. Americans need to think more about American history and its implications. And this book is a great tool to begin that work.
The work of creating and/or revising a nation's story takes many years, but Roosevelt argues it is worth the sometimes-arduous journey. Agree or disagree, I believe Roosevelt's ideas should be heard and evaluated. Great books are not ones that you necessarily agree with, but are the ones that are discussed. And I believe this is definitely one of the better books.
November 21, 2022
The thesis of this thorough and very well articulated argument is that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were primarily about unity and the rights of insiders to overthrow their government. The individual rights they championed were liberty for insiders and rights to property, specifically slaves. They were not about equality and not about liberty for outsiders.
By contrast the Civil War, the Gettysburg Address and the Reconstruction were about equality and fairness to both insiders and outsiders. Reconstruction was defeated in the 1870’s but it resurfaced with the civil rights movement and Warren Court and the Voting Rights Act.
Massive Government intervention in the 20th Century, for example the the initial Social Security, the GI Bill and FHLA, lifted many Americans out of poverty but they were structured so as to benefit whites not blacks. We do not need reparations which feels unfair to racists but we should have more of that kind of legislation structured so as to benefit blacks as well as whites. We should also be drawing our inspiration from Lincoln and the other heroes of that era, not from the slave-owning Founders.
Notwithstanding all this Roosevelt makes the point that whites in red states (even those who are terminally ill and have no insurance) are opposed to the expansion of Medicaid specifically because it would benefit blacks as well as whites.
By contrast the Civil War, the Gettysburg Address and the Reconstruction were about equality and fairness to both insiders and outsiders. Reconstruction was defeated in the 1870’s but it resurfaced with the civil rights movement and Warren Court and the Voting Rights Act.
Massive Government intervention in the 20th Century, for example the the initial Social Security, the GI Bill and FHLA, lifted many Americans out of poverty but they were structured so as to benefit whites not blacks. We do not need reparations which feels unfair to racists but we should have more of that kind of legislation structured so as to benefit blacks as well as whites. We should also be drawing our inspiration from Lincoln and the other heroes of that era, not from the slave-owning Founders.
Notwithstanding all this Roosevelt makes the point that whites in red states (even those who are terminally ill and have no insurance) are opposed to the expansion of Medicaid specifically because it would benefit blacks as well as whites.
July 15, 2022
Probably worth reading a second time. He's not the first to make them, but Roosevelt offers several arguments that deserve serious consideration, around the question of the so-called Founders' original meanings in the Declaration of Independence and original constitution.
As someone that studied the Enlightenment and American colonies' growing movement for independence from Britain, through the war, the Articles of Confederation, and early Federalist era, I should have been more aware of how much Enlightenment thinkers discriminated between men (and they did mean males) being in a state of nature vs. a state of society. It's always been clear that the Declaration is not what most Americans now imagine it to be. But that this distinction makes sense of the otherwise gross hypocrisy is among the claims deserving deeper exploration.
It's not clear now much it matters what the reason was for 'all men are created equal' being used by persons that so clearly did not mean what we now mean by such terms.
But Roosevelt's broader argument is that we who believe in justice should give up on the standard American story of continuity toward 'a more perfect union' and instead embrace the rejection of the founders' white supremacy. Given the backlash of post-construction Redemption, it's hardly a smooth story.
As someone that studied the Enlightenment and American colonies' growing movement for independence from Britain, through the war, the Articles of Confederation, and early Federalist era, I should have been more aware of how much Enlightenment thinkers discriminated between men (and they did mean males) being in a state of nature vs. a state of society. It's always been clear that the Declaration is not what most Americans now imagine it to be. But that this distinction makes sense of the otherwise gross hypocrisy is among the claims deserving deeper exploration.
It's not clear now much it matters what the reason was for 'all men are created equal' being used by persons that so clearly did not mean what we now mean by such terms.
But Roosevelt's broader argument is that we who believe in justice should give up on the standard American story of continuity toward 'a more perfect union' and instead embrace the rejection of the founders' white supremacy. Given the backlash of post-construction Redemption, it's hardly a smooth story.
December 28, 2023
- The premise of the book is rather simple: that the creation story of America, where American independence was founded by the ideal that it's a nation where all humans are created equal, was very much of an after-the-fact story rather than its real origin story. The reason it came to be has a lot to do with latter-day politician's motivation in their own inner desire to make it to be that way, by intentionally interpret the original text of the declaration differently. This method of re-purpose history gives the picture that the nation has always been in consistent with staying the course, striving for a better future for all mankind
- In 1858, the idea that all men are equal are often limited to "white race alone". In addition, not all Caucasians of today are white of yesterday, rather it only implies that "British subjects on this continent [were] equal to British subjects born and residing in Great Britain; that they were entitled to the same inalienable rights, and among them were enumerated life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"
- Before Lincoln, "founding fathers of America" meant "John Smith, William Penn, William Bradford, John Winthrop and so on", not "Washington, Jefferson, Madison and so on" - Author noted that it's Lincoln who made those founding fathers founding fathers
- In 1858, the idea that all men are equal are often limited to "white race alone". In addition, not all Caucasians of today are white of yesterday, rather it only implies that "British subjects on this continent [were] equal to British subjects born and residing in Great Britain; that they were entitled to the same inalienable rights, and among them were enumerated life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"
- Before Lincoln, "founding fathers of America" meant "John Smith, William Penn, William Bradford, John Winthrop and so on", not "Washington, Jefferson, Madison and so on" - Author noted that it's Lincoln who made those founding fathers founding fathers
September 7, 2023
First, it's hard to resist a book written by a third-generation Kermit. He narrates the audiobook himself and does it well. He uses historical events ranging from ancient Rome to 2022 to lay out his argument.
Kermit introduces a different way for a patriotic American to think about U.S. History: a new Story to replace The Standard Story.
In clear sweet prose, he explains why it could be helpful if we think of the Gettysburg Address and the post-Civil War Constitution as better founding documents than the Declaration of Independence and the original U.S. Constitution. He talks about how the U.S. Founders sacrificed justice for the sake of Unity. He admits that the political situation may not have given these original founders much choice, but their failure to plan an end to slavery resulted in, well, a lot more slavery, capped off by our Nation's bloodiest war.
The Reconstruction Congress nobly sacrificed Unity in favor of Justice, but this didn't last. Federal troops were withdrawn from the former Confederacy, leaving the country to suffer decades of injustice: oppression, lynching, and systemic racism.
Kermit ends with a rallying cry for well-meaning Americans to strive for justice.
Kermit introduces a different way for a patriotic American to think about U.S. History: a new Story to replace The Standard Story.
In clear sweet prose, he explains why it could be helpful if we think of the Gettysburg Address and the post-Civil War Constitution as better founding documents than the Declaration of Independence and the original U.S. Constitution. He talks about how the U.S. Founders sacrificed justice for the sake of Unity. He admits that the political situation may not have given these original founders much choice, but their failure to plan an end to slavery resulted in, well, a lot more slavery, capped off by our Nation's bloodiest war.
The Reconstruction Congress nobly sacrificed Unity in favor of Justice, but this didn't last. Federal troops were withdrawn from the former Confederacy, leaving the country to suffer decades of injustice: oppression, lynching, and systemic racism.
Kermit ends with a rallying cry for well-meaning Americans to strive for justice.
January 26, 2023
Kermit Roosevelt's The Nation That Never Was postulates that rather than heralding the accomplishments of the Founding Fathers in creating the US’ inaugural principles, that the US should strive to emulate the aspiration of Reconstruction.
Roosevelt frames his story on the concept that the “standard story” surrounding our foundational values is inaccurate at best and a lie at worst. He writes that rather than creating a union that touted the mantra all men are created equal, that the Framers built this country on a compromise that actually meant only a certain race and class of men are created equal.
But Roosevelt believes that rather than continuing to reflect our historical founding narratives of the past, that the US should acknowledge the wrongs exacted by these narratives and that we recognize how many of these wrongs were reversed during Reconstruction and look forward through a true lens of equity and equality.
As he puts it, “Making a more just nation is not about returning to our origins or making America (anything) again. It is about making America.”
TD recommends.
Roosevelt frames his story on the concept that the “standard story” surrounding our foundational values is inaccurate at best and a lie at worst. He writes that rather than creating a union that touted the mantra all men are created equal, that the Framers built this country on a compromise that actually meant only a certain race and class of men are created equal.
But Roosevelt believes that rather than continuing to reflect our historical founding narratives of the past, that the US should acknowledge the wrongs exacted by these narratives and that we recognize how many of these wrongs were reversed during Reconstruction and look forward through a true lens of equity and equality.
As he puts it, “Making a more just nation is not about returning to our origins or making America (anything) again. It is about making America.”
TD recommends.
January 13, 2026
If you're not aware of the inherent contradictions and hypocrisy within our founding documents, then maybe you should invest time in research. Plenty of historians have documented these issues and wrestled with them. They've also offered insights on the compromises and excuses the founders made and examined the consequences we continue to suffer as a nation and as a "people."
Roosevelt writes with a style I describe as "click bait," and he undercuts his argument by aggrandizing the documents he detests and resting his case on the bad behavior of people who were neither alive at the founding nor seen today as anything other than personifications of evil. He also seems hell-bent on wasting precious space defending another spurious book questioning the predicates for the American Revolution.
If you want a factual analysis that relies on primary sources and the historic record—at the expense of personal opinion and invective—please consider the more recent and insightful work from Joseph Ellis, "The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of the American Founding."
Roosevelt writes with a style I describe as "click bait," and he undercuts his argument by aggrandizing the documents he detests and resting his case on the bad behavior of people who were neither alive at the founding nor seen today as anything other than personifications of evil. He also seems hell-bent on wasting precious space defending another spurious book questioning the predicates for the American Revolution.
If you want a factual analysis that relies on primary sources and the historic record—at the expense of personal opinion and invective—please consider the more recent and insightful work from Joseph Ellis, "The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of the American Founding."
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