Stephen Hartnett

“So profound were these changes that the amendments should be seen not simply as an alteration of an existing structure but as a “second founding,” a “constitutional revolution,” in the words of Republican leader Carl Schurz, that created a fundamentally new document with a new definition of both the status of blacks and the rights of all Americans.1”
― Eric Foner, The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution