[4CJ]

Can't you ever admit a mistake?

Yes. In fact, I apologized to Walt yesterday re: the dissent in the Prize Cases.

The Radical Republicans were few in number and had hardly any influence at all until nearly two years after the Civil War ended ...

You need to read The Logic of History by Stephen Carpenter (a Northen editor). He blows that myth out of the water.

[Grand Old Partisan]

Admitting a mistake does not call for an apology.

Where Stephen Carpenter was from is not nearly as important as his political affiliation. From the following (verging on insane) excerpt (1864), it is obvious that he was a Copperhead (northern Democrat sympathizer with the rebels):

"The revolutionary doctrines espoused by the Republican party are the context without which the events of 1860 onward cannot be properly understood. The war was not begun against the South, nor was it ever carried on thereafter, with the mere emancipation of the Southern slaves in view. The shocking Republican documents, speeches, and newspaper clippings collected into this book prove that the “party of Lincoln” was bent on the dissolution of the Union from its very formation in 1854, and only abandoned this agenda in favor of “preserving the Union” when its members perceived the wealth and power to be harvested from the destruction and subjugation of a militarily inferior South."