Though midterm rather than presidential, election stakes were high for the cause of equality in 1866. Reconstruction was underway, but the administration of Andrew Johnson and the Republican-controlled Congress had very different ideas about how to reunite the nation.

Join psychiatrist and author Dr. Stephen A. Goldman as he explains why the soldiers' and sailors' vote would greatly determine the upcoming elections and how competing conventions of Union veterans were organized. At the same time, he will link their staunch support for passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, and equal protection under the law, to their splendid Civil War service and commitment to "the unfinished work" in the decades that followed.