Ep. 58: Van Gosse on the First Reconstruction, Antebellum Historiography, and the New Left

In this episode, Luke talks with Van Gosse, the author of several books, including Where the Boys Are: Cuba, Cold War America, and the Making of a New Left (1993), Rethinking the New Left: An Interpretive History (2005), and The First Reconstruction: Black Politics in America, From the Revolution to the Civil War (2021). The wide-ranging conversation touches on the extensive political participation of black Americans in the Antebellum period, how historians have written about the pre-war era, the absence of a constitutional critique in the New Left, and why few people are talking about the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Van’s blog, In the Red, is here. Historians for Peace and Democracy can be found here. Van mentions several books, including Jeremy Varon’s Our Grief is Not a Cry for War, James Brewer Stewart’s Holy Warriors, Winthrop Jordan’s White Over Black, and David Waldstreicher’s Slavery’s Constitution. Luke mentions Van’s two-part series explaining why America isn’t a democracy (here and here), C. Vann Woodward’s The Strange Career of Jim Crow, and a recent conversation with Bruce Levine.