I suggest reading next Randall's next chapter, "Launching The Radical Program", a study in ongoing unconstitutionality.
Especially noteworthy, in the previous chapter, is the brief account of details of Thaddeus Stevens' own Plan.
He was, after all, the ad hoc leader of the House of Representatives during early Reconstruction.
Re legacies of slavery, it might be more appropriate to call them legacies of colonialism, and then in 1776, legacies of rebellion against the Old European Order itself.
These were problems that were not solved by the Civil War and its aftermath (reconstruction is hardly the right term), but rather boldly illustrated by them.
Randall could describe one major enduring structural problem in a sentence: "This weakness, which would seem to be an inherent defect in the American system as distinguished from the parliamentary system of government,..."
The latter have carried right through, from 1763 until today, and tomorrow.
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