The Wonder of Stevie - Introducing Reconstruction: The Unfinished Promise

Episode Date: June 18, 2026

If you loved The Wonder of Stevie, you can’t miss Higher Ground and Audible’s newest series, Reconstruction: The Unfinished Promise. Reconstruction was a time when Americans struggled over fundamental questions about our country. Who gets to be a citizen? Who has the right to vote? Who can own property? In short, who belongs? Best-selling author and host of Revisionist History, Malcolm Gladwell, guides us through this extraordinary moment in American history with help from former President Barack Obama. Together they explore why America has yet to make good on the promise of Reconstruction — and how it still might.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey there, Higher Ground listeners. We're excited to share our newest series. It's an audible original produced in collaboration with the History Channel. It's called Reconstruction, the Unfinished Promise. I'll tell you just a very quick story, because it gives you a sense, in very personal terms. I'm a fifth grader in Hawaii. This is Barack Obama, 44th president of the United States, someone who knows American history very well, and indeed is a big part of it,

but who was once a kid like any other, struggling to complete a history assignment. Ten years old. And we had this wonderful teacher, Mrs. Hefty. And she was a sweet woman. She had been a missionary and teacher in Africa. She took a great interest in the fact that I was part Kenyan because she lived in Kenya for a time. Anyway, we're assigned a civics assignment. we're supposed to do a

take a historic figure from American history and write about them. So I do what you did back then, go through Encyclopedia Britannica and you kind of find some name. And I start writing this report about this general who

was brave and courageous and had done amazing things and I think, well this is an interesting guy. And I outlined the report and I turn it in and this hefty frowns and she says, you know, Barry, because at the time, that was my nickname. Barry, let's find another assignment.

It turned out as Robert E. Lee. The future president had started to write an admiring report on Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Lee was someone who led a secessionist war against the Union and against the very idea of a United States so that the South could continue holding four million black people as slaves. there was no mention in this entire entry. Is this noble guy on our horse?

There's no mention in the entire encyclopedia that like, he's some other issues. There's some other issues involved in his military prowess. But that's how our culture was structured to justify, to reconcile, this glaring contradiction at the heart of our self-conception. Barack Obama told me this story for a reason, because it's a visceral example of what happens

when we try to take the context out of history. You're left with mythology, a certain type of mythology. The mythology of America about us breaking away from the crown, declaring our independence, All men are created equal. The Omen Farmers, Walt Whitman, there's a whole narrative about who we are as Americans. And there's this inconvenient fact, which is that all this happened at the same time as you had a economy in the South based on slavery. Something is lost when mythology tries to paper over contradictions.

That's what Barack Obama really wanted to talk with me about, a messy, important era of the past that feels, in many ways, much like our current moment. A time when some of the country's most powerful people actually embraced the goal of creating a multiracial democracy, and when huge numbers of white Americans refuse to accept this new reality. A time when political violence was an everyday part of life, and when people who challenged the status quo were publicly beaten and killed with impunity. A time when a powerful political movement worked to limit American citizenship to white men, and when newly free black people nonetheless kept claiming their rights in a changing America. A time known as Reconstruction. Reconstruction took place in the decade following the end of the Civil War in 1865, though it didn't have a formal end point.

It was a time when the country literally had to be reconstructed, rebuilt from the ashes of war and the end of a gruesome slave economy. It was a productive time that included the rewriting of the Constitution, a time that expanded the notion of who could vote and get an education in America. It was also a time of enormous violence and political upheaval. And, as Barack Obama convinced me, by understanding the history of this time, we can better understand what is happening in America today and what could happen in the future. The reason Reconstruction is such a fascinating story is here's a moment, the first real moment since the founding,

in which this idea of perfecting the union is attempted in a fairly significant way. My name is Malcolm Gladwell, and this is Reconstruction, the Unfinished Promise. My first real encounter with the complexity of American history was quite different from President Obama's. I grew up in Canada. I remember as a teenager,

meeting a boy named Roger at a trackmate. Roger was black, and I assumed he was a West Indian, as my family was. That was a safe assumption at the time when a great wave of Jamaicans were settling in southern Ontario. But Roger corrected me. His family had been in Canada for more than a century. His ancestors were enslaved

and had escaped from the United States in the years before the Civil War and settled in a little town called Chatham, which was the last stop on the Underground Railroad. They'd made it all the way to a country they called Canaan. The Promise Land. It was the first time I'd ever considered, firsthand, some remnant of the shadow that slavery cast across the United States. At that point, I'd never been south of the Canadian border. What I knew of America was its glamorous, powerful present, the swagger and self-regard

that came for being the world's beacon of democracy, freedom, and prosperity. I didn't know much of its cloudier past. The black people I knew in Canada came happily and willing to, and willing and flew back to the islands of their origin at every opportunity. Now, I had to confront the truth, for the first time, really, that there had been a time when people like Roger's great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents were forced to flee for their lives, chased across hundreds of miles by bloodhounds and slave-catchers. I have spent much of my career writing about the perplexities and pain of racism,

and I've often wondered whether the seed of my curiosity was planted in that stray conversation with Roger long ago. Reconstruction was the era when the U.S. was forced to face the inconvenient fact that you could not own and sell other people and also call yourself a democracy. During Reconstruction, many people in the United States finally began to resolve the contradiction of its existence. They started by amending the Constitution. The way, at least I think about the Constitution in any society, laws in any society, they codify a collective agreement, a collective understanding about how we're going to behave. And just like how I'm a Robbie's code or any other code, just like the Ten Commandments,

They aren't self-executing. They don't automatically determine we will behave that way. But they are signposts, and those signposts matter. Congress rewrote the signposts of American democracy during Reconstruction by amending the Constitution. Americans hardly ever do that. More than 11,000 amendments have been proposed to the U.S. Constitution. Only 27 have ever been passed. The first ten are the Bill of Rights, of course, which added rights after the founding.

The next two came shortly after, but it took a war to end slavery before Congress finally added three crucial new ideas to the Constitution, starting with the 13th Amendment ratified on December 6, 1865. It abolished slavery, the most direct outcome of the Civil War. The 13th Amendment is crystal clear. The first sentence goes like this. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted

shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction. This is obviously a monumental statement in American history, but the next sentence is also a huge deal. It gives Congress the power to force, force states to obey? Up until this point, up until the Civil War, the ideas of federalism were deeply rooted

in how America conceived of itself. And states could pretty much do what they wanted. And so this is a radical restructuring of American democracy, whereby we actually take a bill of rights to some degree and we say all that, now enforcement resides in the federal government and Congress and it can force states to make sure that it is not abusing its own citizens under the guise of state rights.

Two amendments followed. The 14th, ratified in 1868 and the 15th in 1870. They sought to make freedom a permanent state. to guarantee equal protection under the law and the right to vote, at least for black men. It doesn't get all the way there. But what it does is it leaves all these embers. It leaves all these ideas and possibilities

that then allow future generations to draw on. And it gives us a sense of how this process, of perfecting the union, of creating a true democracy, is not this static project, but is rather this continuous exercise. Reconstruction's legacy was a lot more than just three amendments to the Constitution. It was all those embers, the remains of the possibility and ideas lit during Reconstruction,

ideas such as public education for all, the expansion of the vote, and the notion that individual, states cannot usurp constitutional rights. President Obama says that's all the more reason to revisit the story of reconstruction now, because there's wisdom and courage and foresight in this half-forgotten era from 150 years ago. There are also bad actors and cowards and fraudsters. And we're going to explore all of that in the chapters you're about to hear.

They feature some of America's most accomplished scholars and storytellers. Dozens of voices to take us through one of the most chaotic, complicated, and fascinating times in the modern era. There's not a more revolutionary moment in American history than Reconstruction. 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? They're no longer slaves, but will they be equal citizens? The crucial question of reconstruction is not just to put the country back together, but on what terms? That's the crucial question. It's absolutely a new beginning for the United States. You want to understand rights in America? You've got to go to Reconstruction.

You want to understand the role of government and 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've got to go to Reconstruction. To bring you this story, we dig through old archives, letters, diaries,

court records, eyewitness testimony. What emerges are the triumphs and struggles of a determined band of reformers. There were many black leaders who achieved political power at various levels in the South. And that's what made Reconstruction so radical. You wouldn't see that extent of black political representation till the late 20th century.

They're represented in state, at local offices, and right up to the highest levels of state government and in Congress. We're talking about real life and death matters. The Confederacy has lost and secession has failed, but there's no agreement on what should come next. You will hear about all the ways Americans who risk their lives, to set the country on a new path. She came out and held the mob at bay with a 45 pistol.

As they tried to remake the U.S. economy, Where was he going with the truck of money? It's a good question. I'm not sure. And as they built whole new institutions. A bank for the freed people? Whoa. But in the end, it all comes down to this. Why do so few Americans know the story of reconstruction? Sometimes people call it a failure.

Is that the language you use? I never call it a failure. It wasn't a failure. It was defeated. If you can't imagine this moment of political possibility, then it's hard to hold on to it today. It's easy to despair when you hear the reconstruction story. But what Barack Obama kept saying over and again in different ways

is that when we try to learn from the past, it's not because people once had things all figured out. Quite the contrary. Many knew they were likely to fall short. They knew the forces of darkness were strong, and still, they did what needed to be done. And that sensibility is what we want in our leaders, and it is a sensibility that we want our kids.

it's to learn from history. At least I do, right? And that is not some rosy-eyed, you know, sanitized version of American history, but a clear-eyed understanding of, yes, we took land from previous occupants. America was built on violence and subjugation. and chicanery and confidence men and shenanigans and corruption. But it is also this amazing expression of human possibility. Thomas Jefferson, yes, he had slaves.

And not but, he penned some of the most important words that were ever written. in the annals of humanity. And being able to maintain those two ideas at the same time is what both can inspire you to keep going and make the world and the country better, but also to understand the challenges and the persistence that we're, will be required to overcome those challenges if you want to get to where we want to go.

Contradiction, persistence, challenge. These notions will keep coming up again and again across the saga of Reconstruction. Starting with one man who fought his whole life to get his country to live up to its promises, only to find out that his fight was just beginning. If you like this story, you can find Reconstruction the Unfinished Promise on Autod. or anywhere you get podcasts.