Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America (Studies in Legal History)

Beautifully written and deeply researched, Birthright Citizens transforms our understanding of the evolution of citizenship in nineteenth-century America.

Martha Jones demonstrates how the constitutional revolution of Reconstruction had roots not simply in legal treatises and court decisions but in the day to day struggles of pre-Civil War African-Americans for equal rights as members of the national community.