Book Review: Garrett Epps, Democracy Reborn

by Andrea Spencer (@__aerdna___)

In Democracy Reborn, Garrett Epps crafts a picture of post-Civil War American politics and the struggle to conceive of, write, pass, and ratify the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Epps details the battles in the House and Senate through biographical portraits of the political “great men” who shaped the amendment. Epps declares that “those who gathered in Washington after Appomattox knew that victory depended on taming the Slave Power, on making sure it did not survive the death of slavery itself. A few small adjustments would not save the nation. What was needed was a renovation of the Framers’ house” (Epps, 11). That renovation would be the Fourteenth Amendment. According to Epps, “it has, over time, changed almost every detail of our national life…it did produce…‘a more perfect union’ than the old one” (11). Democracy Reborn tells the story of how revolutionary the Fourteenth Amendment was and how it completely changed America for the better.

With Democracy Reborn, Epps does not enter into a very prolific historiographical conversation. Few significant scholarly works have been written about the Fourteenth Amendment, and even fewer have been published in the last few decades. In this limited scholarship, Epps joins the debate over incorporation theory. According to Cornell Law School, incorporation theory or doctrine is “a constitutional doctrine through which the first ten amendments of the United States Constitution (known as the Bill of Rights) are made applicable to the states through the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.” Some scholars, such as James E. Bond in his 1997 work No Easy Walk to Freedom: Reconstruction and the Ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment and Raoul Berger in his 1989 book, The Fourteenth Amendment and the Bill of Rights, deny incorporation theory, arguing that the amendment’s writers believed the states would retain their ability to guarantee and define the scope of their citizen’s rights. However, scholars such as Michael Kent Curtis in his 1986 work, No State Shall Abridge: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Bill of Rights by Michael Kent Curtis, claim that the amendment framers did intend for states to be bound by the Bill of Rights. Epps agrees with Curtis, arguing that the amendment “was designed to push Congress’s power over the states even further” (173).

Epps organizes his book largely chronologically. However, some chapters are thematic discursions. For example, Chapter 9, “The Prospect of a Good Long Life” gives an overview of the relationship between the suffrage movement and abolitionist movement; oddly, Epps does not connect this chapter to the rest of the book or his argument. The majority of the work is dedicated to chronicling changing Americans politics immediately after the war and biographical exposition of the men who led this change. The book itself is driven by these biographies of men both prominent in the making of the Fourteenth Amendment, such as Thaddeus Stevens, Andrew Johnson, and Jonathan Bingham, as well as men who were more tangentially related, such as Carl Schurz and Walt Whitman. Beginning with the Constitutional framers in the prologue, Epps argues that the inclusion of slavery and the overwhelming dominance of the Slave Power (what he calls the uneven political representation of slave states’ interest in the federal government, thanks to the three-fifths clause) were the primary flaws in the original Constitution. He then fast-forwards to 1865 and continues his narrative. Epps sets up the major players in his story, including Andrew Johnson as the fatally stubborn drunk, Thaddeus Stevens as the thundering anti-slavery Republican, and John Bingham as the under-recognized framer of the Fourteenth Amendment. Epps looks primarily at bills and political debates that shaped what would eventually be the Fourteenth Amendment, tracing the intellectual evolution of civil rights legislation. Most of the book is spent in exposition, and Epps spends only the last few chapters on the actual passage and ratification of the amendment. Epps’ afterword admits that Southern racists found ways to prevent black civil rights and that America has struggled with living up to the idea that all men are created equal. However, he concludes that America is one of the most free nations in the world and in “seasonable time” the country will follow the path of equality that the “second founders” of the Fourteenth Amendment began more than 150 years ago.

Garret Epps is a constitutional scholar, not a trained historian. However, he does use extensive secondary source material, including books by prominent Reconstruction scholars like Eric Foner and Ira Berlin. However, he most frequently references biographies of his main subjects. For his primary sources, he uses the official report of congressional debates, the Congressional Globe and newspapers like Harper’s Weekly and New York Weekly. The sources themselves and his use of them are not groundbreaking; what makes Epps’ work unique is his conception of Reconstruction as a sort of ‘second Revolution’ in America. Guided by his legal and Constitutional background, Epps argues that the Fourteenth Amendment fundamentally changed the Constitution.

Democracy Reborn is not a typical historical monograph. Epps is a dramatic, at times flowery, writer, and he often gets lost in biographical discursions. This can distract the reader and prevent them from following Epps’ argument about the Fourteenth Amendment. However, the thing that most prevents one from following this argument is Epps’ own lack of attention to it. Most of the chapters do not mention the Fourteenth Amendment and are instead devoted to contextual detail and biography. This creates a very vivid picture in the reader’s mind of the political and social issues of Reconstruction America. However, Epps never really makes an clear argument as to why the Fourteenth Amendment was so revolutionary (until, perhaps, his afterword). One learns more about the political complexities of Reconstruction America and the passage of the amendment than about the effects of it. However, Epps does clearly show how federal Reconstruction politics were a distinct break from Antebellum government. Another distinct issue with his work is the lack of diversity of his historical subjects. With Democracy Reborn, Epps contributes to great man history; his subjects are almost exclusively rich white men. Though he does discuss Fredrick Douglass (and inexplicably adds Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony), Epps largely focuses on the same people who have been studied in this context over and over again. Finally, Epps needs to check his details more closely; at one point he refers to Edward S. McPherson as Edward J. McPherson (60).

With Democracy Reborn, Epps adds to the scant historical work done on the Fourteenth Amendment. With his illustrative prose and in-depth characterization of great men, he conjures a vivid image in his readers mind about the political and legal atmosphere of Reconstruction. He tells this story more effectively than he proves his point about the revolutionary nature of the Fourteenth Amendment. Despite this, Democracy Reborn would be a valuable read for Advanced Placement high-schoolers or undergraduate students as an introduction to the topic.