Marion Ira Stout bungled a robbery and spent time in jail, bungled a murder, bungled two suicide attempts, was the victim of a bungled hanging and a Frankenstein inspired resurrection attempt and his girlfriend was his sister.

He was an abolitionist, editor, author, orator, women’s suffragist, statesmen, and reformer.

Historians Howard Zinn and Irwin Unger amass powerful historical evidence to explain how Reconstruction failed to secure equal civil rights for blacks in the American South after the Civil War. Though factually consistent, the two accounts nonetheless differ concerning who was responsible for Reconstruction’s failure and, by extension, whether the failure was inevitable.

The second part to my commentary on The Atlantic’s recently published “100 Most Influential Americans” article.