"We Are Still Catching Up to Him"

"Ultimately, however, these horrific murders and Johnson's blatant racism strengthened Stevens's hand, for they showed that nothing less than full and thorough revolution in the South would prevent that status quo antebellum from taking hold again. By 1867, when some Republicans had already started to lose interest in the whole project, Stevens told them pointedly that 'radicalism is the only thing now that will save and rescue us.' Levine charts the pivotal role Stevens played in helping to draft and pass the 14th Amendment, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Military Reconstruction Act of 1867, and other important measures of early Reconstruction. The novelty and import of these measures can hardly be overstated. As Eric Foner showed in his recent book The Second Founding, they were the first to give the federal government new powers—to protect the rights and liberties of its citizens—rather than take them away."

Richard Kreitner at The Baffler reviews Bruce Levine's Thaddeus Stevens: Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice.