| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Stephen P. Halbrook. Freedmen, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Right to Bear Arms, 1866–1876. Westport, Conn.: Praeger. 1998. Pp. xiii, 230. $55.00.

Bad things happen when the historical record is ignored. The aim of the Fourteenth Amendment—to protect the "privileges and immunities" guaranteed by the Bill of Rights from state encroachment—was almost immediately hijacked by a perverse, ahistorical Supreme Court ruling. While judges felt obliged to respect the ensuing string of skewed precedents, and lawyers eventually found other ways to achieve the original purpose, an effort has been underway to recover the historical record. Stephen Halbrook's book is a part of that effort. His purpose is precise and, in its own way, skewed—to demonstrate that the Fourteenth Amendment was meant to incorporate the Second Amendment about which he has written so much, and that the Second Amendment was understood to protect an individual right to be armed. Both the strength and the weakness of this book stem from that narrow, albeit important, focus. . . .

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