Introducing Reconstruction: The Unfinished Promise

0:01This is Malcolm Gladwell. I want you to imagine a time when the United States was split in two and then, awkwardly, started putting itself back together as millions of people had to fight for the right to become citizens. It was a time of chaos and sometimes violence. Americans struggled over questions like, who has the right to vote, to own property? In short, who belongs? I'm talking about Reconstruction, the era following the Civil War, when Americans ended slavery and expanded voting rights. But none of this was easy. Many people lost their lives trying to change the nation for the better.

0:45President Barack Obama says we forget lessons of this time at our peril. Here's a moment, the first real moment since the founding, in which this idea of perfecting the Union is attempted in a fairly significant way. So in this series, we ask why America has yet to make good on the promise of Reconstruction, and we hear how it still might. There's not a more revolutionary moment in American history than Reconstruction. It's absolutely a new beginning for the United States. To bring you this story, we dig through old archives, letters, diaries, court records, eyewitness testimony. What emerges are the triumphs and struggles of a determined band of reformers.

1:33We're talking about real life and death matters. The Confederacy has lost and secession has failed, but there's no agreement on what should come next.

1:47You will learn all the ways Americans risk their lives to set the country on a new path. She came out and held the mob at bay with a.45 pistol. As they tried to remake the U.S. economy. Where was he going with the truck on money? It's a good question. I'm not sure. And as they built whole new institutions. A bank for the freed people? Whoa. And we'll hear the voices of those who history forgot. Stories of love and sacrifice. Oh dear, I am so lonesome, I barely know how to contain myself. If I was only near you and having one of those sweet kisses. When you explore the story of Reconstruction, you start to think about the U.S.

2:33in a whole new way. It was an era that promised to build a more perfect union, a truly multiracial democracy. It doesn't get all the way there. But what it does is it leaves all these embers. It leaves all these ideas and possibilities that then allow future generations to draw on. Join President Barack Obama and me, Malcolm Gladwell, for Reconstruction, The Unfinished Promise. An Audible original in partnership with the History Channel. Produced by Higher Ground Audio and Pushkin Industries. Available now on Audible or wherever you get podcasts.