I need to research him in more detail again someday. I did some research on him when I was high school age, for a paper, but it’d be interesting to see how I’d view it now, knowing what I know about how the US works now and historically. Back then I had a very favorable view of him, but I have since encountered bits of information here and there indicating his views were a lot worse than they are made out to be. I am now naturally a bit more suspicious of what part he played in the on-paper end of full blown slavery (prison labor loophole aside), knowing how “reforms to dissipate revolutionary liberation energy” tend to be used. Like was he in some way, at some stage of it, genuinely trying to liberate, or was it always more akin to “this is the pill we have to swallow in order to keep the US project going”? Like the factional infighting we’re seeing play out in the US right now, where both candidates are full-throated imperialists and are into the order of elite rule who may have some disagreements on how to go about it.