The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic

"Manisha Sinha’s magnificent account of Reconstruction fleshes out and vastly expands what W. E. B. Du Bois dubbed ‘abolition democracy.’ The Second Republic was never merely a Southern project but a national struggle with global implications. Black and Indigenous people, women and working people, abolitionists and their allies sought to reconstruct a settler colonial nation built on dispossession, slave power, industrial capitalism, and patriarchy. Energized by new visions of freedom nurtured in slave quarters and anti-slavery meetings, they fought long and hard for a genuinely inclusive democracy only to be crushed by the propertied classes, their acolytes, and dupes of racial ideology. Reconstruction’s defeat ensured Jim Crow’s assent as the law of the land and the ideology of colonial expansion. The January 6th insurrection is a consequence of this defeat, which will become crystal clear to anyone who reads this book." - Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

"A landmark. Sinha’s searing and revelatory account of Reconstruction redraws its borders, redefines its meaning, and restores its place as the hinge upon which American history turns." - Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States

"A big and bold book. Manisha Sinha's The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic is marked by deep learning, expansive thinking, and compelling arguments. Readers will find it illuminating, challenging, and thought-provoking. A significant contribution to a large and distinguished literature." - Steven Hahn, author of A Nation Without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830-1910

"Studded with significant events, compelling stories, and little-known historical actors, The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic is a sweepingly grand political history that traces the multiracial quest for ‘abolition democracy’ while expanding our understanding of the stakes and afterlives of the Reconstruction era. With this book, the award-winning historian Manisha Sinha has given us another magnificent take on a pivotal chapter of U.S. history." - Tiya Miles, author of All That She Carried