“What has it meant to take civil rights seriously – especially the ‘right to bear arms’ – including in the years following the abolition of slavery? By quoting legislative debates, Congressional hearings on Ku Klux Klan violence, and newspapers and law books of the time, constitutional scholar Stephen P. Halbrook shows that both supporters and opponents of the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) believed that it protected all Bill of Rights guarantees – especially the Second Amendment – from infringement by the states.
From the Freedom’s Bureau Act of 1866 to the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Cruikshank (1876), Halbrook paints a vivid portrait of a political and legal system grappling with the true meaning of civil rights. Now available in paperback, the book of the Supreme court cited in its landmark Heller decision (2008), as the leading account of the relationship between the Second Amendment and the states during Reconstruction, is poised to help a larger audience better understand why earlier generations of Americans viewed the right to bear arms as essential for securing civil rights” – Paperback