Guelzo on Magliocca

A recent issue of The Wall Street Journal included a review of a new book by historian Gerard Magliocca, pictured here.

Magliocca is the author of American Founding Son, a biography of John Bingham, apparently the leading figure in the creation of the 14th amendment.

The reviewer is Allen Guelzo.

I'll simply offer what I regard as a candidate for the title "money quote":

"Even so, as the author concedes, it is hard to peg Bingham as a radical. He opposed secession, but he also rejected radical abolitionist Rep. Thaddeus Stevens's campaign to 'territorialize' the Confederate states. Bingham designed the 14th amendment to clarify the constitutional meaning of U.S. citizenship and allow that meaning to include the newly freed slaves, but he waffled on whether this should include voting rights. And he drew a shade over the close of his congressional career with his anti-Catholicism and his involvement in the Credit Mobilier scandal, in which a dummy corporation diverted federal earmark money to the shareholders of the Union Pacific Railroad."

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