ABSTRACT
Even if I were not a scholar of racial politics, the omission is startling. Surely the Civil War and the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were a turning point in the eyes of any historically knowledgeable scholar; many textbooks and courses, for example, are divided into the two halves of antebellum and postbellum. But for someone as passionate about equality, democracy, and human dignity as Dahl undoubtedly was, to leave out the 1860s in a list of crucial inflection points in American history raises questions.
