This book tells the story of constitutional government in America during the period of the 'social question'. After the Civil War and Reconstruction, and before the 'second Reconstruction' and cultural revolution of the 1960s, Americans dealt with the challenges of the urban and industrial revolutions. In the crises of the American Revolution and the Civil War, the American founders - and then Lincoln and the Republicans - returned to a long tradition of Anglo-American constitutional principles. During the Industrial Revolution, American political thinkers and actors gradually abandoned those principles for a set of modern ideas, initially called progressivism. The social crisis, culminating in the Great Depression, did not produce a Lincoln to return to the founders' principles, but rather a series of leaders who repudiated them. Since the New Deal, Americans have lived in a constitutional twilight, not having completely abandoned the natural-rights constitutionalism of the founders, nor embraced the entitlement-based welfare state of modern liberalism.

'This is an important, albeit at times difficult and highly opinionated, analysis of US constitutional development from the immediate post-Civil War era through the New Deal.'

Source: Choice

'This study’s emphasis on ideas in American political development sets it apart from many similar historical works. Yet the careful research on policy and jurisprudence adds a detailed narrative of the nuts and bolts of American politics that is sometimes lacking in works of political theory. Moreno’s book is an ambitious, meticulously researched, and thoughtful study strongly rooted in primary sources. It should be required reading for anyone interested in constitutionalism and jurisprudence, political thought, and American political development.'

Jason R. Jividen Source: The Journal of American History