Springfield, IL (CAPITOL CITY NOW) – You may now have heard the term “second American Revolution,” but that’s what University of Connecticut’s Manisha Sinha calls Reconstruction. Sinha, that university’s James L. and Shirley A. Draper chair in American history, is curator of an exhibit by that name which begins Friday and concludes Jan. 17, 2027, at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield.

“During the Civil War and Reconstruction, the country, as Abraham Lincoln put it, had a new birth of freedom,” Sinha told reporters at a preview Thursday. “That was the second American republic, with the Constitution being amended to lay the foundations of our modern interracial democracy, and our first civil rights laws passed during that time.”

The third revolution, she says, encompasses FDR’s New Deal and the civil rights legislation of the 1960’s.

“For the first time ever, we’re really talking about that legacy of Lincoln. We’re talking about what happens after Lincoln dies and Reconstruction begins, and the promise of Reconstruction,” said Christina Shutt, the ALPLM’s executive director.

Artifacts include the museum’s copy of the 13th Amendment and a chair from Ford’s Theatre.