Eric Foner Quote
These are the times foretold by the Prophets, ‘when a nation shall be born in a day', declared the call for a black political gathering in 1865. A Tennessee newspaper commented in 1869 that freedmen habitually referred to slavery as Paul’s Time, and Reconstruction as Isaiah’s Time (referring perhaps to Paul’s message of obedience and humility, and Isaiah’s prophecy of cataclysmic change brought about by violence). God, who had scourged America with war for her injustice to the black man, had allowed his agent Lincoln, like Moses, to glimpse the promised land of universal freedom and then mysteriously removed him before he reached its blessed fruitions.
These are the times foretold by the Prophets, ‘when a nation shall be born in a day', declared the call for a black political gathering in 1865. A Tennessee newspaper commented in 1869 that freedmen habitually referred to slavery as Paul’s Time, and Reconstruction as Isaiah’s Time (referring perhaps to Paul’s message of obedience and humility, and Isaiah’s prophecy of cataclysmic change brought about by violence). God, who had scourged America with war for her injustice to the black man, had allowed his agent Lincoln, like Moses, to glimpse the promised land of universal freedom and then mysteriously removed him before he reached its blessed fruitions.
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About Eric Foner
Foner has published several books on the Reconstruction period, starting with Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 in 1988. His online courses on "The Civil War and Reconstruction", published in 2014, are available from Columbia University on ColumbiaX.
In 2011, Foner's The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (2010) won the Pulitzer Prize for History, the Lincoln Prize, and the Bancroft Prize. Foner previously won the Bancroft Prize in 1989 for his book Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877. In 2000, he was elected president of the American Historical Association. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2018.