Author and scholar Kate Masur joins the podcast to talk about the struggles for equality during the Antebellum and Reconstruction periods. Our conversation focuses on two of Kate’s works: An Example for All the Land: Emancipation and the Struggle Over Equality in Washington, D.C. and Until Justice Be Done: America's First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction. We cover slavery and the abolitionists’ struggles in the nation’s capital, questions of state versus national authority, the prewar or “first” civil rights movement, and how the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were used in these debates. The cover image is a painting by Frank Wright depicting a celebration of the end of the war on May 23rd and 24th, 1865. Over 150,000 men marched down Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol to the White House.