Kenneth Stampp, RIP
The American historian Kenneth Stampp -- best known for his 1956 book The Peculiar Institution, which effectively destroyed the idea that plantation slavery was a largely benign and paternalistic system -- has died at age 96. Jeffrey Rogers Hummel has posted a respectful tribute at Liberty & Power; I'll just add that Stampp's 1965 book The Era of Reconstruction opens with one of the best discussions I've seen of how the Civil War and Reconstruction were perceived in the century following Appomattox. Requiescat in pace.
