New podcast alert -- Kai Wright Recommends "Reconstruction"

Summary

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Blindspot – "Kai Wright Recommends 'Reconstruction'"

Release Date: June 29, 2026
Podcast: Blindspot (The HISTORY® Channel and WNYC Studios)
Host: Kai Wright
Episode Theme:
A look into "Reconstruction," an Audible original series, examining the crucial but often neglected period following the Civil War. The episode highlights Frederick Douglass’s persistent fight for Black rights, the dramatically different postwar visions for America, and the lasting lessons about democracy, race, and leadership.

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Episode Overview

This special Blindspot episode introduces and features "Reconstruction," a new podcast series focusing on the years following the Civil War—when the United States grappled with becoming a true multiracial democracy. Through interviews with historians, readings from primary sources, and sharp analysis, the episode illustrates how the efforts of Frederick Douglass and others shape our understanding of democracy, race, and American identity. It also offers lessons relevant to current struggles over voting rights, racial equality, and constitutional governance.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Reconstruction’s Central Dilemma (01:00–05:00)

• Kai Wright: Introduces the series and frames Reconstruction as a still-relevant American "blind spot" and a period when the US had to decide if it could become a multiracial democracy.
  • "Is the story of Reconstruction a blind spot in American history? I would argue that it reveals one of our biggest blind spots..." (01:38)
• The role of Frederick Douglass: Conversation reflects on Douglass’s second act post-abolition and his central place in the fight for genuine freedom and equal citizenship.

2. Frederick Douglass as American ‘Founding Father’ (03:07–06:11)

• Douglass’s struggle: Constantly negotiating hope for equality with clear-eyed realism about America’s deep failings and racism.
  • “Douglass is constantly battling between a desperate belief that the better angels of our nature will win out... but he has also seen the very worst.” (03:09 – Kai Wright)
• His continued importance: “Frederick Douglass is a founding father.” (04:01 – Host/Narrator)

Memorable Quote

• "If you came to America ... try to see Frederick Douglass." (07:23 – David Blight)

3. Postwar Disorientation: Douglass and the Death of Lincoln (09:20–12:05)

• Explores Douglass’s reaction to Lincoln’s assassination, his loss of purpose, and the quick pivot required by transformational events.
  • “He says, Othello’s occupation is gone...” (08:14 – David Blight)
  • Douglass: “I feel as though I have reached the end of the noblest and best part of my life...” (08:14)

Notable Moment

• Douglass’s grief: “It is a day for silence and meditation, for grief and tears. Yet I feel that though Abraham Lincoln dies, the Republic lives.” (10:18 – Frederick Douglass, via David Blight)

4. Andrew Johnson’s Troubled Leadership (12:05–14:46)

• Introduction of Johnson: Contrasts Johnson’s presidency with Lincoln’s, underlining Johnson’s racism, incompetence, and antagonism toward Black rights.
  • “He’s petty, he’s mean, he’s vindictive, he’s abusive, he’s a drunk. He’s not a great character to inhabit the office of the President of the United States.” (12:26 – Manisha Sinha)
• Lincoln’s mistake: The decision to put Johnson on the ticket shown as one of Lincoln’s gravest errors.
  • “It’s a horrible choice.” (14:11 – Kai Wright & David Blight)

5. The Conflicting Approaches to Reconstruction (15:12–18:33)

• Douglass’s vision: Black suffrage as key to true abolition: “Slavery is not abolished until the black man has the ballot.” (15:24)
• Johnson’s approach: Minimal intervention, quick readmission for Confederates, and resistance to Black civil and political rights. Johnson's personal drive for loyalty and spectacle in pardoning ex-Confederates becomes a point of political dysfunction.

Notable Quote

• “Whatever Andrew Johnson may be, he is no friend of our race.” (18:24 – Frederick Douglass)

6. Carl Schurz’s Fact-Finding Mission (21:31–26:09)

• Introduced as a pivotal but largely forgotten figure, Schurz is dispatched by Johnson to the South to report on postwar conditions.
  • “Does anyone remember Carl Schurz today? I don’t think so.” (21:31 – Host/Narrator)
• Schurz’s findings: A journey from optimism to horror as he witnesses the devastation, hostility, and violence of the postwar South.
  • Reports not just physical aftermath but also the intense, persistent racism and lawlessness targeting Black people.

7. Violence and “Unfinished” Freedom in the South (28:10–31:44)

• Accounts of rampant violence, mob attacks on Black citizens, and efforts by Southern whites to reestablish white supremacy.
  • “The planters in that region seem to have combined to keep the negroes in their former state of subjection and to kill those that refuse to submit.” (30:35 – Historical Narrator/Reader)

8. Schurz’s Report Shifts National Debate (33:06–34:40)

• Impact: Schurz defies Johnson’s hopes for a whitewashed report, delivering hard evidence to Congress and the public.
  • “This reconstruction thing is not going to be fast, it’s not going to be easy, and it’s going to take effort on our part.” (32:48 – John Grinspan)
• The episode underscores Schurz’s report as a key catalyst for Congressional opposition to Johnson and support for Black rights.

9. The Showdown for Black Citizenship (37:28–43:28)

• Congress moves to enact civil rights and constitutional change.
• Douglass’s confrontation with Johnson: In a dramatic White House meeting, Douglass and other Black leaders are rebuffed and insulted.
  • Johnson: “I especially don’t want to be preached to by people like you. And he meant Douglas, who can round out periods and put in fancy words.” (38:58 – David Blight)
  • Johnson brags: "I once owned slaves, but I never sold one." (39:01 – David Blight)
• Douglass’s response: Gives a fierce new speech—Sources of Danger to the Republic—warning of misplaced trust in leaders and the dangerous design of American institutions.
  • “Our government may at some point be in the hands of a bad man ... We ought to have our government so shaped that even when it is in the hands of a bad man, we shall be safe indeed.” (44:27 – Frederick Douglass, quoted by David Blight)

10. Radical Reconstruction & Its Achievements (47:24–50:00)

• Congress prevails: Radical Republicans win overwhelming majorities, override Johnson’s vetoes, and impeach him.
• New Amendments: The 14th and 15th Amendments establish birthright citizenship, equal protection, and Black male suffrage.
• Transformation: Black Americans exercise new rights, holding office and helping create the first modern, progressive state governments in the South—public schooling, expanded women’s rights, legal reform.

Core Insight

• “You want to understand rights in America, you got to go to Reconstruction... race, government, democracy—it all starts there in the modern sense.” (49:15–49:40 – David Blight)

11. Lasting Relevance (50:42–51:13)

• The episode concludes by stressing that, to truly understand American democracy, race relations, and public institutions like education, one must go back to the incomplete promises and struggles of Reconstruction.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Douglass’s resilience: “For a long time he, he bent [history] to his will.” (04:02 – Host)
• On Johnson’s failings: “He’s a unionist... but a former slaveholder, a racist in his bones, and a fervent states rights advocate.” (14:14 – David Blight)
• Douglass on the limits of the Constitution: “It is simply a human contrivance. It is the work of man and men struggling with many of the prejudices and infirmities of common to man.” (42:02 – Frederick Douglass)
• On the fragility of democracy: “We ought to have our government so shaped that even when it is in the hands of a bad man, we shall be safe indeed.” (44:27 – Frederick Douglass)

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Important Timestamps

• 01:00 – Kai Wright introduces the new series and its relevance
• 05:38 – Douglass’s public prominence and cultural influence
• 10:18 – Douglass’s grief after Lincoln’s assassination
• 12:26–14:14 – Critique of Andrew Johnson’s character and impact
• 15:24 – Douglass’s demand for Black suffrage
• 21:31 – Introduction of Carl Schurz and his mission
• 27:17 – Description of Black aspirations for freedom and land
• 31:44 – Accounts of violence against freedmen
• 33:06 – Schurz’s report disrupts Johnson’s plans
• 37:28 – Congress debates the future; push for constitutional amendment
• 39:01 – Johnson’s racist dismissals during meeting with Douglass
• 44:27 – Douglass’s pivotal warning about government and leadership
• 47:24 – Congressional victory, Johnson’s impeachment, Radicals’ reforms
• 48:13–49:47 – New rights and the brief “radical consensus”
• 50:42 – Legacy of Reconstruction in American education and rights

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Conclusion

This episode serves as a gripping, insightful primer on the post-Civil War Reconstruction era, exposing the deep roots of America’s ongoing battles over race, democracy, and national identity. By spotlighting the lives and ideas of Frederick Douglass, the politics of Andrew Johnson, and Carl Schurz’s pivotal reporting, it reminds listeners that many of the struggles of Reconstruction are, as Kai Wright puts it, "questions still sadly relevant today." The radical aspirations and tragic shortcomings of the era remain essential context for America’s current moment.

Transcript

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[Narrator/Host]

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[Kai Wright]

Hey, Blindspot listeners. Kai Wright here. It has been a minute, but I am back in your feed because I want to share with you something I've been working on since we last spoke. It's a series about Reconstruction, the period right after the Civil War when the United States had to put itself back together and decide, could it become a multiracial democracy? How would we do that? Still sadly, relevant questions today, but one of the people at the heart of the action during Reconstruction was was Frederick Douglass. Now, you probably know something about Douglass's life as an abolitionist, but many people don't think about his second act in the time after slavery had been legally abolished. But Confederates, they had certainly not given up, and Northern liberals had to be convinced to just keep pushing for true freedom and true opportunity for all. And so I made a story about this period. It's part of an Audible original series called the Unfinished Promise. It's hosted by Malcolm Gladwell. It features President Barack Obama, and we did it with Pushkin, Higher Ground and the History Channel. It feels relevant to you here in this feed because it's worth asking. Is the story of Reconstruction a blind spot in American history? I would argue that it reveals one of our biggest blind spots, but you take a listen and you decide. And if you want to hear more, you can find the whole show on Audible or anywhere you get your podcast. Thanks for checking it out.

[Narrator/Host]

After the war

[Kai Wright]

Douglas is such a fascinating character, right?

[Narrator/Host]

Frederick Douglass, perhaps America's most famous abolitionist leader. A person who as a child escaped from slavery, who went on to become a global spokesperson for freedom. When I sat down with President Barack Obama in he really wanted to talk about this larger than life man.

[Kai Wright]

Douglas is constantly battling

[Frederick Douglass]

between

[Kai Wright]

a desperate belief that the better angels of our nature will win out. He has seen this possibility of genuine equality, but he has also seen the very worst. He himself has experienced slavery. He has watched slave catchers grab people and haul them away. And he has witnessed equivocation and cowardice and betrayal.

[Narrator/Host]

I am struck by that same thing that he sees the best. And he also is clear eyed about who we are and what we're capable of. And this is why I think he belongs in that kind of pantheon of founding father. Frederick Douglass is a founding father.

[Kai Wright]

He really is.

[Narrator/Host]

He really is. I said that not only because it's true, but because Douglass is one of those people who should have been crushed by history. Instead, for a long time he, he bent it to his will. The movement to end slavery did not begin with Frederick Douglass. That movement existed before the United States did. A year before the Declaration of Independence, Philadelphia Quakers founded the nation's first anti slavery society. And from the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade, enslaved people organized revolutions and plotted escapes. And the abolition movement churned out fiery figures that are now well known. Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, William Lloyd Garrison and David Walker, the radical John Brown. But certainly Frederick Douglass was best known in his own time, both in the US and abroad. And so we begin our series with Douglass in the opening days of reconstruction in 1865. He's a man who thinks he's just completed his life's work, but he's about to discover that his work has just begun. I'm Malcolm Gladwell and this is the Unfinished Promise. One of our editors, Kai Wright, has been obsessed with Douglass for years, and particularly with the evolution of the man's politics.

[Kai Wright]

Can you help people understand just how big a deal Frederick Douglass is at this stage in history? I mean, like today he would have a billion Instagram followers, like the most streamed podcast in history. Right.

[Narrator/Host]

Kai called up David Blight, who is the Frederick Douglass expert. Blight wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning biography of Douglass. He's such a fan that when he spoke with Kai, he was wearing a T shirt with a portrait of Douglass on it. I'm going to let the two of them tell the story of this influential activist's second chapter.

[David Blight]

And he's interesting to think about. Yeah, he'd either be the guest on every major podcast or he'd be doing his own. He's a very big deal. At the end of the war, his image was everywhere. He really couldn't go anywhere without being recognized. Part of it was the hair.

[Kai Wright]

Think about the term hair on fire. It's a shock of hair, a lion's mane.

[David Blight]

Part of it was just his presence and the voice, almost a shouting kind of baritone voice.

[Frederick Douglass]

I know of no country where the conditions for effecting great changes are more favorable than here in these United States.

[David Blight]

I found all kinds of stories in the press of people reciting the first time they saw Douglass. To a certain degree, he became a kind of wonder of America.

[Historical Narrator/Reader]

Reception soiree to Mr. Frederick Douglass. The celebrated Frederick Douglass has been lionized in the city for several days. Notwithstanding the severe rainstorm last evening, Frederick Douglass drew out an immense audience.

[David Blight]

If you came to America from Europe, for example, touring the country, you wanted to see Niagara Falls, you wanted to see Washington, New York City, Washington D.C. and a few other things. But if possible, especially if you came out of reform traditions, try to see Frederick Douglass.

[Kai Wright]

But in the spring of 1865, this world famous man who has spent literally his entire life working to abolish slavery, at the moment of his triumph, he's in a funk. He's kind of a guy who's lost for purpose, right?

[David Blight]

He is lost for purpose at the very end of the war. It's the way he described it. And he drew right from one of his favorite moments in Shakespeare. He said, othello's occupation is gone.

[Frederick Douglass]

I feel as though I have reached the end of the noblest and best part of my life. My school is broken up, my church disbanded.

[David Blight]

He didn't know. He didn't know where to go. He didn't quite know what to do. Douglass, he's one of the rare, rare radical reformers in history who lives to see his cause triumph in the middle of his life. He's only 40 some years old and he will face the challenge the rest of his life to sustain the victory of emancipation, the great transition from slavery to freedom. But no one knows, no one really knows yet where any of this is going. What he was certain of, Kai, is that the Confederate south was not going away. He kept warning, he warns, they're still there. The slaveholding spirit, he always is warning is still out there.

[Kai Wright]

This ghost haunting the United States. I can't overemphasize how fast history moved in 1865. The war ends in April and in less than a week, Abraham Lincoln is assassinated. That obviously catches the whole world off guard. But for Frederick Douglass, who Again, is already disoriented by the fact that he's just witnessed the completion of his whole life's mission. I just. I can't imagine how he processed Lincoln's death.

[David Blight]

Douglass was horrified, and there are many ways to understand that. He goes back to Rochester at the news of Lincoln's assassination, and a huge crowd had gathered in the central square of Rochester, New York, where he lived. And Douglas went and joined the crowd, and there were some speakers, and the crowd called for him. And it's a very moving statement he made.

[Frederick Douglass]

It is a day for silence and meditation, for grief and tears. Yet I feel that though Abraham Lincoln dies, the Republic lives.

[David Blight]

He said at that moment, he had never felt a kinship with his fellow Americans. And by that, I think he meant white people. He'd never felt such a kinship as he did through Lincoln's death.

[Kai Wright]

Just think about these two men. Here's Douglas, a formerly enslaved child who now commanded the attention of the President of the United States during the war. He was able to look Lincoln in the eye and challenge him to do more, to not only end slavery, but to arm black men in the fight to save the Union. And here's Lincoln standing astride history, trying to save the Union and gradually realizing that Douglass was right. The only way forward for the United States was to abolish slavery. Both Lincoln and Douglass are legendary pragmatists, cerebral by nature, but each of them see the national story in fully biblical terms. They're ready to partner in this divine task of rebuilding the United States. And then, bang, the partnership is snuffed out in one gunshot. On Easter weekend, no less, just days after the end of the war. And the man who rises into the presidency as a result of that gunshot, he is no Abe Lincoln.

[Manisha Sinha]

Andrew Johnson is an interesting character. He was literally the polar opposite of Lincoln.

[Kai Wright]

Manisha Sinha is chair of the History department at the University of Connecticut, and she has written a great deal about Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson, America's troubled 17th president. She's an advisor on our series.

[Manisha Sinha]

Johnson seems to have been a person who really sort of lacked political skills. You know, he's petty, he's mean, he's vindictive, he's abusive, he's a drunk. He's not a great character to inhabit the office of the President of the United States.

[Kai Wright]

But Lincoln had picked Andrew Johnson as his vice president in 1864 as a show of national unity because Johnson was a Southern Democrat instead of a Northern Republican. The first sign of trouble came on Lincoln and Johnson's inauguration Day, there are

[David Blight]

the stories that Andrew Johnson was a little schnockered on some brandy or bourbon or something because he had a horrific toothache that day. Now, he might have been sipping for other reasons, who knows? But he was not entirely sober at his inauguration as Vice President of the United States. Now, at that point, what Douglas and others knew about Andrew Johnson is he's obviously from Tennessee. He's from East Tennessee. You know, there's an old saying about Johnson, quote, old Andy never went back on his raisin, which means he knew where he was from. He was a damn good stump speaker. You know, he could jump on a wagon and get the farmers cheering about something. He's a former slaveholder that was known who never believed in secession, which is why he stayed in the Union. He was the only senator from a seceded state to stay in the Union, which is what got him on Lincoln's ticket, which, by the way, I've always said this to all my dear friends who are Lincoln scholars, why don't you ever talk about that? That's one of Lincoln's biggest mistakes.

[Kai Wright]

It's a horrible choice.

[David Blight]

It's a horrible choice.

[Kai Wright]

It's a horrible choice.

[David Blight]

I mean, politically, at the moment, it's a unity. It's a reunion ticket for the symbolism of the Southerner who stayed in the Union. He's a unionist, he really was, but a former slaveholder, a racist in his bones, and a fervent states rights advocate. Of course, nobody expected presidents to be shocked.

[Kai Wright]

Andrew Johnson takes over the presidency at the start of the remarkable era that historians now call Reconstruction.

[David Blight]

We get to use the word unprecedented sometimes because it fits. The country had never been in this situation. The end of a massive civil war. America was now being reinvented. But how? What would it do? Who were the freed people? How would they be defined?

[Kai Wright]

Frederick Douglass couldn't have felt Andrew Johnson was fit to lead the nation through this conversation. But Douglass did have a clear idea about how to answer that crucial question of Reconstruction.

[Frederick Douglass]

Slavery is not abolished until the black man has the ballot.

[Kai Wright]

We need voting rights first and foremost. And the Republicans who controlled Congress mostly agreed. That's where Lincoln had been headed.

[Manisha Sinha]

Lincoln, when he died, one of the last speeches he made was to say black men who are educated and who have served in the Union army should get the right to vote. So that's like the first public endorsement of black citizenship.

[David Blight]

But Andrew Johnson, he wanted nothing to do with black civil rights, political rights. He wanted, to the extent we can understand him, he wanted black people to become a Kind of an American serfdom. They would remain agricultural workers. They would stay in the South. They would be a backbone of the economy. To the extent Andrew Johnson thought much about all of that, that's as far as he ever wanted to go.

[Kai Wright]

He did think a great deal about how to handle the Confederacy. Remember, the Confederate states left the Union. They seceded and took up arms against the United States. And their leaders, many of whom had been members of Congress before the war, were actual literal traitors. So one of the big questions of Reconstruction was how to bring these states and their traitorous political leaders back into the fold. Johnson, he had been a senator from a Confederate state at the start of the war. He just personally refused to secede. So now he's president and he wants the traitors back in.

[David Blight]

They would be immediately readmitted to the Union. He would accept some disenfranchisement of ex Confederates. But even that he had an alternative plan for which was to require them to apply to him personally for pardons. And that is exist.

[Kai Wright]

Sounds familiar.

[David Blight]

Well, that whole staff of people working for the executive branch just processing pardons for ex Confederates. They would literally line up at the White House or executive building nearby to get their pardons. Johnson liked, did. See, Johnson was. Johnson had the self image of a poor boy. He's a poor boy from east Tennessee hill country. And he did grow up with not much, although he had owned some slaves and he was proud to tell you that. But he liked the idea of the old planter class, which he was not from having to kind of cower to him. So yeah, that sounds familiar too, doesn't it? The guy with the sense of grievance is going to make everybody who might have looked down on him come and bend their knee. He loved it.

[Kai Wright]

And meanwhile black people have to get caught in the middle of it.

[David Blight]

Black people aren't even going to be allowed in the middle of it.

[Frederick Douglass]

Whatever Andrew Johnson may be, he is no friend of our race.

[Kai Wright]

So Douglas sees Andrew Johnson and now he's got his new vocation. Now he has found his calling in opposition essentially to Andrew Johnson.

[David Blight]

Oh yeah, and what a great foil.

[Narrator/Host]

David Blight and Kai Wright will be back to talk more about this coming showdown. But first I'm taking us to meet the man who really got it underway. Remember, Frederick Douglass and Andrew Johnson both need public opinion on their side after the war. Douglass argues that the federal government has an obligation to the newly freed people of the South. It must not only protect them, but give them the right to vote. President Johnson Disagrees. He doesn't think the federal government should do much of anything. In fact, he's busy pardoning Confederates. But Johnson is only president by dint of a terrible tragedy. His power is tenuous. He needs some ammunition for his arguments. So he sends a man you've probably never heard of on a historic mission. It's a mission that will become hugely consequential for Reconstruction, just not in the way Andrew Johnson hopes. This is our dude, right? So in my many years in New York City, I have come, walked past this monument many times. We're in the corner of 116th street on Morningside Drive, on the edge of Columbia University, on the border between Columbia and Mount Morningside park, one of the crown jewels of Manhattan. And there is this statue which I have passed, and it's never occurred to me to stop and wonder who it is. And it's this actually quite imposing statue of a man in what looks like a man in his 60s or 70s, wearing a kind of long, imposing cloak, holding onto his hat and a very determined look on his face. And it says, carl Schurz, a defender of liberty and a friend of human rights. So this statue dates to 1913. At the dedication ceremony for this statue, Joseph Choate, the one who led the movement to get it built, said, this day will not end the memory of Carl Schurz. Does anyone remember Carl Schurz today? I don't think so. I've never seen anyone standing in front of that statue. The man actually seems lost to history, like a lot of what happened in the Reconstruction era. At the end of the Civil War. Carl Schurz was in the vanguard of American politics. One of the people who had rallied around Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party to save the Union.

[David Blight]

If you think about it, this was a. We saw them talk about generations in politics, and this was a generation of political leaders. They won the Civil War. They mobilized as no one had ever imagined. And here they are in 1865, victorious. It's a remarkable generation.

[Narrator/Host]

And Carl Schurz is right there in the middle of it. He's a German immigrant who fought and lost in movements against European monarchy before coming to America and joining Lincoln's political coalition. He sees the United States as a laboratory for democracy, as an example to the world. No more royalty, no more aristocracy, and no more slavery.

[John Grinspan]

The awesome thing about shirts is, on the one hand, he's like. He's on kind of the side of liberal democracy for all these mass movements in the 19th century. He's like a streak running across the 19th century.

[Narrator/Host]

Finally, I found someone who's gotten into Carl Schurz as much as I have John Grinspan, a historian at the Smithsonian Institute who studies the politics of the 1800s.

[John Grinspan]

And the other thing is, Carl Schurz is incredibly kind of needling and pushy, and the Yiddish word nudnik is the word I think of for him. He's such a difficult, sometimes annoying individual that it's fun to see the humanity in somebody who's involved in all these kind of.

[Narrator/Host]

It's the summer of 1865, just a few months after the Civil War has ended and after Lincoln has been killed. Andrew Johnson, the new president, asks Carl Schurz to come to the White House. Shirts thinks here's an opportunity to shape the reconstruction effort that's just begun.

[John Grinspan]

He sees some things he thinks Johnson is doing wrong and in a maybe naive way, thinks he can go to Johnson and talk him into a better policy.

[Narrator/Host]

What follows is a little digression, but it's hard to resist, and it tells you something about how Americans were handling both the trauma of war and a president's assassination. On the way to Washington to see Johnson, Kahlshirtz stays with friends in Philadelphia. The family had lost two sons in the war, and like so many others, they wanted to communicate with them through a seance. The night Schurz arrives, they invite him to join in. He wrote about it later.

[Historical Narrator/Reader]

One of the daughters, an uncommonly beautiful, intelligent and high spirited girl of about 15, had shown remarkable qualities as a writing medium. When the circle was formed around the table, hands touching, a shiver seemed to pass over her. Fingers began to twitch. She grasped a pencil held out to her and as if obeying an irresistible impulse, she wrote in a jerky way the messages given her by the spirits.

[John Grinspan]

He asks that the girl call up the spirit of Abraham Lincoln, who's, you know, just dead for a few months at that point. And he claims that at the seance the spirit of Abraham Lincoln tells him that Johnson is going to send him on an important, important mission. It's classic Carl Schurz that he has Lincoln come back from behind the grave to give him a promotion.

[Narrator/Host]

But now, after that side trip to the spirit world, he has a real president to meet. I asked historian Manisha Sinha about that encounter. So Shirts goes to Washington, sits down with Johnson, and what does Johnson explicitly ask him to do?

[Manisha Sinha]

So Johnson asks Shirts to go to the Southern states and says, I want you to report on the conditions in the south right now. And I think he wants to use Shirts he wants to send Shirts to the south to report back to him. Hey, everything is fine. It's all hunky dory and you know, the south can rejoin the Union.

[Narrator/Host]

Oh. So from Johnson's perspective, he's looking, he's looking for a kind of COVID story. He thinks Shirts is going to come back with something that kind of justifies him sort of washing his hands of the whole thing and moving on. Why does he think Schurz would be such a willing dupe?

[Manisha Sinha]

That's an interesting question. I think he's also calculating that he wants to send someone who would be believable to the radical wing and to the entire Republican Party.

[Narrator/Host]

In mid July, Carl Schurz begins his fact finding mission. He boards a steamboat from Washington to the South Carolina Sea Islands. A US Military officer takes him to a plantation near Beaufort, far down the eastern coast, just shy of the South Carolina Georgia border. Shirts is excited by what he sees.

[Historical Narrator/Reader]

Fields free from weeds, the cotton plants healthy. The cornfields promised a rich yield. Everything breathing thrift, order and prosperity. We passed by a large log house in which a colored preacher was exhorting his congregation for it was Sunday.

[Manisha Sinha]

This is an area where the union army abolitionists, freed people themselves, are experimenting in systems of free labor that would replace slavery. Freed people's idea of free labor was linked to their own traditions of economic autonomy. They envisioned free labor as sometimes even ownership of land, but definitely control over who they labored for, how much they labored and what they would get for it.

[Narrator/Host]

But this pleasant picture would not hold up for long. Shirts leaves the Sea Islands and takes another boat to Charleston, South Carolina. That's where he starts to encounter the real devastation of the war.

[John Grinspan]

He writes about how long it takes getting into Charleston before he sees a living creature. This city that was so kind of glamorous and sophisticated on the eve of the war now looks like it's just completely in ruins. He really sees the impact on urban civilian populations and the degree of destruction and the degree of the word he keeps using is solenness. The degree of, of anger and resignation and frustration that he runs into among the kind of, especially the white elite southern population who previously had been so dominant in a place like Charles and now will barely speak.

[Narrator/Host]

Shirts travels further into South Carolina. He rides on miserable trains through 95 degree heat. His mule drawn wagon breaks down. The roads are nothing but deep sand. He visits Columbia, the state capital, and finds it reduced to what he calls a confused mass of charred ruins. He passes through the remains of General Sherman's Infamous march and sees a broad black streak of desolation.

[John Grinspan]

Reconstruction has barely begun. The war is, in a sense, over in that the major armies have surrendered and Jefferson Davis has been captured. But there's no sense of order or peace. There's just kind of degrees of chaos. And he talks a lot as he travels, to especially to kind of former confederates and to white southerners, and he gets a sense that there's a consensus that the confederacy has lost and secession has failed, but there's no agreement on what should come next.

[Historical Narrator/Reader]

They want to fight the war over again, and they are sure in five years we are going to have a war bigger than any we have seen yet. They are impatient to get rid of this damned military despotism. They will show us what stuff southern men are made of, such is their talk.

[Narrator/Host]

Shirts makes his way to savannah, georgia. He finds a city still reeling from mob violence that broke out on independence

[John Grinspan]

day in savannah, when they hold a Fourth of July celebration in 1865, the war is over. It's a Fourth of July celebration. It should be fairly patriotic. Basically, the only people that attend are union soldiers and freed slaves, and they're attacked by an angry white mob.

[Narrator/Host]

Historian manisha sinha says carl schurz wasn't the only person to witness this kind of thing. The patriotic holiday had become a flashpoint.

[Manisha Sinha]

We see evidence coming from all over the south that the only people who want to celebrate the fourth of july are freed people. It's not southern whites who are very sullen and hate the 4th of July, interestingly enough, at that point. And black people really sort of seem to tie their demands and their freedom claims and their rights to the national government, to the union army, and to celebrating the nation.

[Narrator/Host]

Shirts then takes a train to atlanta. He spends the weekend there and finds yet more lawlessness.

[Historical Narrator/Reader]

The planters in that region seem to have combined to keep the negroes in their former state of subjection and to kill those that refuse to submit.

[John Grinspan]

There's a regular drumbeat at this time of open, regular violence against African americans, formerly enslaved people across the south. One scholar at the time estimates that there's a murder a day happening somewhere, and enshrut sees a lot of it.

[Historical Narrator/Reader]

The demoralization of the people is frightful to behold in its manifestations. Travelers are frequently attacked on the public highways. Cotton is stolen in enormous quantities. Horses and mules are run off whenever they are not watched with the utmost care, and the perpetrators are almost never arrested and punished.

[John Grinspan]

I'd say the general direction of the whole trip is as he moves further south and certainly further west. He runs into more and more chaos and more and more violence and more and more kind of evil plans by former Confederates to do whatever they can to get as close to re enslaving people as possible.

[Narrator/Host]

Shirts finally reaches the end of his journey. New Orleans, in September. He's been traveling for two months through a treacherous landscape. He is by now completely exhausted and miserable. He writes about sweltering nights in the wretched country taverns and about nights spent in desperate fights with ravenous swarms of mosquitoes. He gets dengue fever, or as he calls it, breakbone fever. And he's just appalled by all that he has witnessed in the South.

[Historical Narrator/Reader]

This is the most shiftless, most demoralized people I have ever seen. If I can only make my main report, I shall open the eyes of the people of the North.

[Narrator/Host]

Shirts returns to Washington D.C. he's ready to write a report to the President documenting all the devastation and lawlessness he's seen. This is precisely the assignment Andrew Johnson had given him. And now Shirts has the evidence he needs to make the President face reality.

[John Grinspan]

This reconstruction thing is not going to be fast, it's not going to be easy, and it's going to take effort on our part.

[Narrator/Host]

But Andrew Johnson is no longer interested in what Carl Schurz has to say.

[John Grinspan]

He doesn't want Shirts around anymore. He doesn't want Shirts involved anymore. He seems to regret ever giving him the position to begin with.

[Narrator/Host]

And he certainly doesn't want to publish a report. Shirts writes it anyway. He includes everything he has seen organized by topic. The rampant violence against black people and the, quote, utter absence of national feeling among Southern whites. He calls for troops to stay in the south, for black suffrage to be a condition of any Confederate states re entry into the Union. He says there needs to be a reconstruction of the, quote, whole organism of Southern society to bring it in harmony with the rest of American society. This is the report he delivers to Andrew Johnson and which he gives to Johnson's Republican enemies.

[Manisha Sinha]

I think Johnson miscalculates enormously.

[Narrator/Host]

I mean, this is sort of a, a spectacular own goal by Johnson. He finds this guy thinking this guy will be his kind of willing dupe, will go back and someone with some credibility with the abolitionists will go and give a nice whitewash for what's going on in the south that will justify Johnson's own agenda. And the guy returns and he's not playing ball. He's determined to tell the truth. And now Johnson's stuck. He created this mess Political mess for himself.

[Manisha Sinha]

Exactly. And I think Johnson realizes then that Shirtz's report and other such reports coming out of the south is going to result in the failure of his own restoration plan.

[Narrator/Host]

That plan being do as little as possible. Republicans ultimately force the President to formally submit Carl Schurz's report to Congress, thereby making it a fully public document. But the President attaches a note in which he tries desperately to obscure the facts. His damage control is kind of. It's kind of audacious. In his note, he says, perplexing questions were naturally to be expected. I love the grammatical construction of this. Mistakes were made. Perplexing questions were naturally to be expected from the great and sudden change in the relations between the two races. But systems are gradually developing themselves under which the freedman will receive the protection to which he is justly entitled. And then he celebrates the spirit of nationality which is rapidly emerging for the sectional animosity of the war. It's like it's one plus one is three.

[Manisha Sinha]

Absolutely. And especially for Johnson to talk about freed people's rights, it is a bit in your face, a bit rich. Exactly. In your face, rich. But he really wants to tell Northerners, hey, the south is no longer bitter, and they're not bitter against the Union or you, that they have all accepted it. And in fact, Schurz has just witnessed the precise opposite.

[John Grinspan]

I think 100,000 copies of it go out, which is a huge number back then, and it shows up in basically all the newspapers. And by the end of the year, Shirtz's report is really influencing how people are thinking about Reconstruction.

[Narrator/Host]

Carl Schurz's report ended up being the most radical thing he ever did. He went on to have a successful career and then faded into obscurity. But his report on the condition of the south helped change the course of history because the Republicans in Congress immediately begin to challenge Johnson's policies. They put forth their own bold ideas for how the country should be put back together. And this sparks what is really the first big battle between the branches of American government, the White House versus Congress, who will have the last word on the direction of the Union the following year? 1866 is one of the most momentous years in American political history. And that's when Frederick Douglass steps back into the fray. Here I'm going to turn our story back to our editor, Kai Wright.

[Kai Wright]

So you now have two starkly contrasting visions for how the country should be put back together. There's Andrew Johnson's approach, quick and easy, with everything essentially going back to how it was before the war. And then there's the approach Carl Schurz advised in his report, make black people full citizens with the right to vote and use the military to enforce that right if need be. In January of 1866, Congress convenes a set of hearings to debate the matter. They're considering a big, sprawling constitutional amendment that will settle things once and for all. This is what will ultimately become the 14th amendment to the U.S. constitution. And as all of this is consuming the national conversation, Frederick Douglass leads a delegation of black men to the White House.

[David Blight]

They managed to get this appointment. They weren't invited.

[Kai Wright]

David Blight, again, Douglass biographer.

[David Blight]

They went in with a prepared statement. They were able to get through part of their prepared. They went there to lobby the President of the United States for the right to vote and protection and all the other rights. They got through part of their prepared statement, and Johnson interrupted them. He was not going to be preached to by a bunch of black men. In fact, at one point, he said, I especially don't want to be preached to by people like you. And he meant Douglas, who can round out periods and put in fancy words.

[Kai Wright]

Wow.

[David Blight]

Oh, yeah.

[Kai Wright]

People who know how to use their words. I don't want to be.

[Frederick Douglass]

No, I don't.

[David Blight]

Don't speak to me like that. Johnson held the floor for 45 minutes. Johnson went on and on and on. And part of Johnson's speech, which is what it was, this was not a discussion. He said, you know, I once owned slaves, but I want you to know I own slaves, but I never sold one. He said that to them, I guess, believing that would not offend them.

[Kai Wright]

Yeah.

[David Blight]

No, no, he's real. It's amazing. It got worse. Douglas would try to interrupt, you know, like, Mr. President, may I? Mr. President, may I? And then Johnson finally just said, no, you will not speak to me. And at some point there, about 50, 55 minutes in, Douglas said, well, we're finished here. He asked his whole delegation to get up, and they walked out.

[Manisha Sinha]

Johnson can barely disguise his own racism. He doesn't see Douglass the way Lincoln sees him, as a black leader and as somebody who's putting forth some legitimate ideas about black rights and reconstruction. It's just the opposite. He sees. He demeans Douglass and he calls him the N word and he says, oh, he'll cut my throat off just like any other slave.

[David Blight]

Douglas said he heard it. I've always imagined Douglas turning around, looking at Andrew Johnson, you know, wishing he could, you know, take his teeth out, but probably just walked out and Said, oh, yeah, they went over to a hotel, they wrote up a statement. They published it immediately the next morning in a Washington, D.C. paper describing exactly what had happened. And then Douglas wrote a new speech. This. Douglas always did this when something big happens. He'd go to his desk and he wouldn't know exactly what he thinks about something until he went to his desk and he wrote a new speech.

[Frederick Douglass]

And he called it Sources of Danger to the Republic.

[David Blight]

And it's a barn burner. He just butchered Johnson.

[Frederick Douglass]

In this speech, I know of no greater misfortunes to individuals than an overconfidence in their own perfection. And I know of fewer misfortunes that can happen to a nation greater than an overconfidence in the perfection of its government.

[Kai Wright]

Douglas opens this speech by warning, look, don't think there's something divine or almighty about the institutions that support American democracy, starting with the Constitution itself.

[Frederick Douglass]

There were neither thunderings, nor lightnings, nor earthquakes, nor tempests, nor any other disturbance of nature when this great law was given to the world.

[Kai Wright]

The Constitution is just a piece of paper ideas on a page.

[Frederick Douglass]

It is simply a human contrivance. It is the work of man and men struggling with many of the prejudices and infirmities of common to man.

[Kai Wright]

And it is time to deal with those prejudices. Douglas says, if you want this to be a democracy, it's gotta be a real democracy.

[Frederick Douglass]

Make it a government of the people, by the people and for the people, and for all the people, each for all, and all for each. Blot out all discriminations against any person theoretically or political. Practically. Keep no man from the ballot box or jury box or the cartridge box because of his color. Exclude no woman from the ballot box because of her sex. Let the government of the country rest securely down upon the shoulders of the whole nation.

[Kai Wright]

But really, in this speech, Douglas is here to talk about leadership. He says, yes, we must update the Constitution, but even then, no matter what is written in that document, our liberty actually depends on something more active. That that is the lesson of the Civil War. He says, imagine if Lincoln had not been president during the war. Imagine the wartime commander in chief as the guy we got now had that

[Frederick Douglass]

other embodiment of political treachery, meanness, baseness, ingratitude. The vilest of the vile, the basest of the base, the most execrable of the execrable of modern times. He who shall be nameless occupied the presidential chair. Your magnificent republic might have been numbered with the things that were.

[Kai Wright]

Douglas wants them to get rid of the veto he wants them to limit presidents to one term, and he wants them to get rid of Johnson's ability to pardon confederates, for sure. The President, he says, has too much power.

[Frederick Douglass]

Mr. Johnson has sometimes overstepped this power in certain conditions of his mind, which are quite frequent, and mistaken himself for the United States instead of the President of the United States.

[Kai Wright]

There's a line in it that gives me chills when I read it today. He says, our government may at some point be in the hands of a bad man, when in the hands of a good man. It is all well enough. We ought to have our government so shaped that even when it is in the hands of a bad man, we shall be safe indeed.

[David Blight]

You know, can you imagine the first time I read that? I mean, it was. Well, I had read it before at some point, but, you know, you can read a Douglas speech six times and find something new in it. But I used to end. Occasionally I used to end talks on Douglas with that during Trump's first term. They just end with that. I. I wouldn't mention Trump. I mean, I didn't have to. You know, it was so poignant. But, you know, he. What he's saying there is. We got problems with our Constitution. There are structural problems with it, but we still do depend on human character on some level. It's such a prescient warning for all sorts of political systems, all sorts of places in the world. Democracy is a great thing, but it first needs law and structure, but then it needs people who believe in it. And one without the other probably won't work.

[Kai Wright]

Frederick Douglass took this speech on the road, campaigning for a bold new Constitution. And Andrew Johnson barnstormed across the country with his own speech. It was an election year on top of everything else. So the President wanted voters to give him a new Congress, one that would support his vision for a quick and tidy Reconstruction.

[Manisha Sinha]

He even says the real traitors to the Union were not the former Confederates, but they are the radical Republicans of the abolitionists. These are the real enemies to the Union. Johnson is stuck in this very rigid, racist view, so he thinks the majority will support him because he can play the race card. And he does that constantly. If you give black people rights, you're taking them away from whites. He says that constantly. And he's stunned when Northern whites do not get duped by his race card because they're seeing what's happening in the South. So the sympathy is for freed people at that point. There is no sort of racial unity between Northern whites and Southern whites on this issue. Johnson completely misreads the political situation and

[David Blight]

it totally backfired on Johnson. The Republicans overwhelming won those congressional off year elections, both houses and returned a veto approved 2/3 majority of both houses of Congress that next fall.

[Kai Wright]

And for the next three years, from 1866 to 1870, Congress passes law after law over Andrew Johnson's vetoes. They actually grow so tired of his obstruction that they impeach him in 1868. He's the first ever president to claim that dishonor. Johnson survives by a single vote, but it hardly matters. He's a lame duck president, a leader without a party. And with Johnson out of the way, Congressional Republicans radically redesign the United States of America.

[Manisha Sinha]

This would be a tremendous moment. It is kind of a refounding of the republic because suddenly you get this momentum for the first federal civil rights laws that are passed at this time. The constitutional amendments, especially the 14th Amendment.

[Kai Wright]

The 14th Amendment establishing the idea of universal citizenship to anyone born in the United States, regardless of race or any other status, with equality before the law for all citizens. The 15th Amendment establishing voting rights for black men at least, and civil rights laws that spell out how all these new rules are gonna work.

[Manisha Sinha]

The founding principles of an interracial democracy in the United States. It's really an exciting moment in American history.

[Kai Wright]

Black Southerners leap at the opportunity as well. They rush to the polls to vote. Thousands of black men hold public office. And they help create some of the most progressive state governments in the history of this country. States like South Carolina create the first public schools, expand legal rights for women, abolish debtors, prisons, and so much more.

[David Blight]

They did engineer a remake in the United States. And it's the only time for that brief moment from essentially 1866-68, 69, 70, that that moment when the term radical had a sort of consensus traction.

[Kai Wright]

It's hard to imagine in the United States, radical republic radical was the consensus. They were in power for three years.

[David Blight]

Yeah. By the way, the greatest legacy of the original Republican Party. Try this on. As an irony. They believed above all in activist, aggressive use of federal power. I mean, look at the ways they had just used federal power. That period is the laboratory where an American government, the idea of government, was reinvented. For better or worse. You can hate it, you can love it, you can like parts of it, but that's the era you got. You want to understand rights in America, you got to go to Reconstruction. You want to understand the role of government in society, Got to go to Reconstruction. You want to talk about what governments owe their people and what people owe their governments. You got to go to Reconstruction. You want to talk about race in America? You got to go to Reconstruction. Because it kind of all starts there in the modern sense, and we relive it now every day. All the time.

[Narrator/Host]

All the time. I would add that if you want to understand education in America, you've got to go to reconstruction as well. Because that's when public education as we know it was established, and much of it by the people who'd just recently been enslaved.

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[David Blight]

Oh my gosh.

[John Grinspan]

No way.

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[Kai Wright]

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