Today in our History – President Andrew Johnson announced his plans for Reconstruction, his staunch Unionism, and his firm belief in States Rights.

GM – LIF – Today’s American Champion event installed him after President Lincoln's assassination making him, President of the United States. He grants immediate amnesty to former Confederates who own less than $20,000 worth of property.

Other ex-Confederates may petition him for presidential pardons, which he freely grants. His plan to readmit the former Confederate states requires them to convene conventions to disavow their acts of secession, abolish slavery, and repudiate their war debts.

The New President, who succeeded the assassinated President Lincoln in April 1865, the congress was hoping that he would be even harsher than Lincoln in readmitting Confederate states.

But the new President, a former slave owner from East Tennessee, believed in limited federal intervention and did not share the Radical Republicans’ sweeping vision of the rights of African Americans. His plan instead granted amnesty to repentant former Confederates and turned southern politics over to Union loyalists in the former rebel states.

Given the stark differences in their national agendas, the administration and the congressional majority were soon at odds. Of the 29 vetoes the new President issued—many involving Reconstruction bills—Congress overrode 15, more than for any other President.

By December, all the ex-Confederate states seek readmission except Texas. But South Carolina refuses to condemn its act of secession; Mississippi refuses to ratify the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery; and several states refuse to repudiate their war debt.

Remember - “If you could extend the elective franchise to all persons of color who can read the Constitution of the United States in English and write their names and to all persons of color who own real estate valued at not less than two hundred and fifty dollars and pay taxes thereon, and would completely disarm the adversary.

This you can do with perfect safety. And as a consequence, the radicals, who are wild upon the negro franchise, will be completely foiled in their attempts to keep the Southern States from renewing their relations to the Union.” – President Andrew Johnson

Today in our History – May 29, 1865 – President Andrew Johnson announced his plans for Reconstruction, which reflected both his staunch Unionism and his firm belief in states’ rights.

In Johnson’s view, the southern states had never given up their right to govern themselves, and the federal government had no right to determine voting requirements or other questions at the state level. Under Johnson’s Presidential Reconstruction, all land that had been confiscated by the Union Army and distributed to the freed slaves by the army or the Freedmen’s Bureau (established by Congress in 1865) reverted to its prewar owners.

Apart from being required to uphold the abolition of slavery (in compliance with the 13th Amendment to the Constitution), swear loyalty to the Union and pay off war debt, southern state governments were given free rein to rebuild themselves.

As a result of Johnson’s leniency, many southern states in 1865 and 1866 successfully enacted a series of laws known as the “black codes,” which were designed to restrict freed blacks’ activity and ensure their availability as a labor force. These repressive codes enraged many in the North, including numerous members of Congress, which refused to seat congressmen and senators elected from the southern states.

In early 1866, Congress passed the Freedmen’s Bureau and Civil Rights Bills and sent them to Johnson for his signature. The first bill extended the life of the bureau, originally established as a temporary organization charged with assisting refugees and freed slaves, while the second defined all persons born in the United States as national citizens who were to enjoy equality before the law.

After Johnson vetoed the bills–causing a permanent rupture in his relationship with Congress that would culminate in his impeachment in 1868–the Civil Rights Act became the first major bill to become law over a presidential veto.

After northern voters rejected Johnson’s policies in the congressional elections in late 1866, Radical Republicans in Congress took firm hold of Reconstruction in the South. The following March, again over Johnson’s veto, Congress passed the Reconstruction Act of 1867, which temporarily divided the South into five military districts and outlined how governments based on universal (male) suffrage were to be organized.

The law also required southern states to ratify the 14th Amendment, which broadened the definition of citizenship, granting “equal protection” of the Constitution to former slaves, before they could rejoin the Union. In February 1869, Congress approved the 15th Amendment (adopted in 1870), which guaranteed that a citizen’s right to vote would not be denied “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

After 1867, an increasing number of southern whites turned to violence in response to the revolutionary changes of Radical Reconstruction. The Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist organizations targeted local Republican leaders, white and black, and other African Americans who challenged white authority.

Though federal legislation passed during the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant in 1871 took aim at the Klan and others who attempted to interfere with black suffrage and other political rights, white supremacy gradually reasserted its hold on the South after the early 1870s as support for Reconstruction waned.

Racism was still a potent force in both South and North, and Republicans became more conservative and less egalitarian as the decade continued. In 1874–after an economic depression plunged much of the South into poverty–the Democratic Party won control of the House of Representatives for the first time since the Civil War. Research more about this great American Tragedy and share it with your babies. Make it a champion day!