Navigating Public Opinion in Wartime Leadership

Vox’s Dylan Matthews talks with historian Bruce Levine about his book Thaddeus Stevens: Civil War Revolutionary and Fighter for Racial Justice. They discuss how Stevens — a person with anti-racist ideals so far outside the mainstream of his time — managed to be so effective, how he developed those ideals in the first place, and how to continue his fight today.

Host: Dylan Matthews (@dylanmatt), Senior Correspondent, Vox

Guest: Bruce Levine, Author; Professor (emeritus) of History, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

References: 

• Thaddeus Stevens: Civil War Revolutionary and Fighter for Racial Justice by Bruce Levine (Simon & Schuster; 2021)
• Lincoln (2012; directed by Steven Spielberg; written by Tony Kushner, based on Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns-Goodwin)
• The Birth of a Nation (1915; directed by D.W. Griffith; written by D.W. Griffith and Frank E. Woods)
• Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy (1956)
• The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and the Social Revolution that Transformed the South by Bruce Levine (2014; Random House)

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This episode was made by: 

• Producer: Erikk Geannikis
• Editor: Amy Drozdowska
• Engineer: Paul Robert Mounsey
• VP, Vox Audio: Liz Kelly Nelson

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