Patrick Reynolds's "Flashbacks" strip on the background of Andrew Johnson's impeachment is downright shocking [Comics, Jan. 31]. Does your paper honestly wish to push the "black Republican" misinterpretation of the Reconstruction era on its young readers? No legitimate historian today would characterize the actions of Congress in the years after the Civil War as "designed to wreak more misery on the South." The Dunning school, which created this mythical vision in the late 19th century, is almost certainly the most discredited school of historical thought within American historiography.

Reynolds's example of the evil-radical Republican is quoted as advocating seizure of plantations and placing the South under martial law, but why does he not mention the real horrors that the radicals enacted? Full citizenship and voting rights for freedmen, public education for all and preventing high-ranking Confederates from sweeping back into public office were the kinds of "harsh measures" that Congress passed. President Johnson clearly viewed civil rights for the freedmen as blows against the long-suffering South, and seemingly Patrick Reynolds does too.

Does your paper wish the children who read its comics to share this view?

 -- Vernon S. Archer Jr.