Aaron Sheehan-Dean
speaker
924 appearances
3 recordings
1 series
first heard Feb 2026
last heard 24 Aug
Aaron Sheehan-Dean’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.
Appearances
And so it gives the major reinterpretation of Reconstruction happens in the 1960s when historians start looking back and saying, wait, this wasn't a failure because it went too far.
That was what white Southerners said.
It was a failure because it didn't go far enough.
It didn't actually provide fair protection of, you know, for all people.
To be sure, to be sure.
And I think, you know, it's one of the, I mean, as a Civil War historian, primarily, though I'm now working on a post-war project, I do want people and Americans generally to pay attention to Reconstruction, you know, and to think about what it means to have moments of political opportunity and of rapid social and economic change and how these things intersect.
That's the world that we're in right now, as you noted, rapid technological development, unpredictable economic and social change, and political upheaval.
And as those sort of three forces collide, this is a very useful moment to be able to kind of put under the microscope and see the decisions that were made and what effects they produce so that in our own time, we make the wisest possible choices, knowing that, of course, there will be unintended consequences to what we do that we can't
it.
Thanks, Don.
It's a pleasure to be here.
And yes, this should be a very colorful and fun year.
Well, for those of your listeners who've suffered me in the past, this will sound like special pleading for me to single out the Civil War.
And as a Civil War historian, it's probably obvious, but it is, I think, bears repeating that Union victory in the Civil War
is what in fact makes this anniversary possible in a very fundamental way.
And we have talked about contingency and certainly readers, people who have read carefully about the military history of the Civil War now know all of the vulnerable moments during which the Civil War could have ended quite differently.
And then we wind up with a North America with eight or 15 or 45 republics.
And instead we're celebrating the 250th anniversary of one that dates
back from 80 years before the Civil War, but I would still view and argue that Northern Victory is a kind of remarkable confirmation, that's certainly how Lincoln understood it, of the ability of this republic to persevere.
And I think that's where thinking about the Civil War in relation to the nation's founding opens up some interesting questions about continuities and discontinuities.
Showing 341–360 of 924 · page 18 of 47
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