Patrick Link’s Reviews > Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877 > Status Update

The free labor mindset which was a great help to abolition in the 1850s was an even greater help to capitalism in the 1870s. It is a concept that is more weird and foreign to me than anything I've read about. I really like the leftist perspective in this book that few of these big American history narratives have. The moment of radicalism and its retrenchment deserves much closer attention.

George Roper, an incautious black veteran, was shot and beaten after rushing into the street and shouting, "Hurrah for Grant and Colfax" as Klansmen rode through the streets of Huntsville.


I'm in the part of the book that covers the direct opposition to Reconstruction and the terror of the klan is as disturbing to me as it is local.

The radical moment seems short-lived and smothered by capitalist worry and racist violence. I will have to reappraise what I know on Ben Wade which is mainly his career in the 1840s.

Interested in Ben Wade's speech on class conflict in 1867.