On May 9th, history this week embarks on a three-part miniseries, tracing the aftermath of the Civil War.

It's the second founding, some call it even the second American Revolution.

The idea was to reconstruct the union, but on the basis of freedom.

On Reconstruction, we'll take you from sweltering military prisons to the dusty senate cloakroom,

stops on the road toward rebuilding a broken country.

Starting with the first of many hard and even dangerous questions arising from the war,

what should be done with Confederate rebels?

What does it say if the greatest act of treason in American history can't be branded as such?

What part of execute is off the table on this?

We'll Confederate President Jefferson Davis beat charges of treason.

And why would Andrew Johnson, an ally of Abraham Lincoln, turn his back on the goal of Reconstruction, justice for all?

He said things that make your skin crawl.

It's like why did we fight for four years?

If slavery is going to come back and then other guys?

How will civil rights activists wrestle with the fallout from the Civil War?

100 years after it was supposed to avenge it?

The first Reconstruction came to an end, but the battle for civil rights never stopped.

Will the second Johnson in the White House, Lyndon B. Johnson, do better than the first?

They say that him as don't make a pitch for civil rights, Johnson says to them,

well what the hell is the presidency for that?

Listen to Reconstruction in the history this week feed starting May 9th.