re: #68 HappyWarrior

OT but I finally saw Lincoln. Man Day-Lewis is great. And how nice after seeing him portrayed as a bad guy in Birth of a Nation that Thaddeus Stevens is shown as the visionary that he was. Really, if you haven’t read on Stevens ever, he was a champion of many of the downtrodden groups in the 19th century, not just African Americans.

When I began to dig into Civil War history a few years ago, it came as quite a surprise to me to find how the era of Reconstruction was portrayed so negatively by most “mainstream” historians (not to mention the popular press and media/movies) for many decades afterward. Such a view of course goes along with, if not explains, the violence Blacks experienced during those decades on both sides of the Mason Dixon line, and the political and social disenfranchisement until the 1960’s.

Thaddeus Stevens and many of the other Radical Republicans deserve a much needed rehabilitation.