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Lepore: Civil War and Reconstruction rewrote constitutional meaning with the 13th–15th Amendments
Summary
At the forum, Lepore said Dred Scott and the Civil War precipitated the urgent constitutional settlement that produced the 13th–15th Amendments, which she described as transforming constitutional interpretation and enabling subsequent moral-reform amendments.
Jill Lepore told the Concord audience that before the Civil War the federal Constitution was effectively immune to amendment on the slavery question and that the Dred Scott decision deepened the crisis. "When the Supreme Court rules that no black man can ever be a citizen of The United States," she said, referencing the 1857 decision, "abolitionists were like, what are we gonna do now?"
The Civil War and its aftermath produced the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, Lepore said, creating a constitutional settlement that reworked citizenship and rights and made the Constitution an available instrument for future moral reform. She tied that pattern to later progressive-era amendments and 20th-century social reforms that followed constitutional settlement moments.
Impact: Lepore highlighted that constitutional change in crisis moments reshapes both law and political possibility, turning previously excluded demands into constitutional practice.
