Johnson's Plan

President Andrew Johnson

Johnson's Battle with Congress

Both Northern anger over the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln as well as the immense cost of human life during the Civil War led to vengeful demands for harsh policies in the South. Initially, Vice President Andrew Johnson spoke of hanging rebel Confederates. When he became President, however, Johnson took a much softer line and pardoned many of them. Additionally, no trials for treason took place. Only Captain Henry Wirz, commandant of the prison camp in Andersonville, Georgia, was executed for war crimes.

Johnson's conservative view of Reconstruction did not include the involvement of former slaves in government, and he refused to heed Northern concerns when southern state legislatures implemented Black Codes, laws that limited the basic human rights and civil liberties of blacks. Johnson's presidency, therefore, would be known primarily for its lax enforcement, and at times defiance, of Reconstruction laws passed by Congress.

Despite the abolition of slavery, many former Confederates were not willing to accept the social changes. The fears of the mostly conservative planter elite and other prominent white citizens, however, were partly assuaged by Johnson's assurance that wholesale land redistribution from the planters to the freedman would not occur. Johnson ordered that land forfeited under the Confiscation Acts of 1861 and '62, which were passed by Congress and administered by the Freedman's Bureau, would not be redistributed to the freedmen, but instead returned to pardoned owners.

Freedmen and the Enactment of Black Codes

Southern state governments quickly enacted the restrictive Black Codes. Although they were abolished in 1866 and seldom had effect, this occurred due to the Freedman's Bureau's, not local courts', handling of legal affairs pertaining to freedmen.

The Black Codes indicated that the freedmen would have more rights than they had before the war, but still only a limited set of second-class civil rights. Additionally, freedman were not granted voting rights or citizenship The Black Codes outraged Northerners, and were overthrown by the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which gave freedmen full legal equality (except the right to vote).

This helped freedmen force planters to bargain for their labor. Such bargaining soon led to the practice of sharecropping, which gave the freedmen both greater economic independence and social autonomy. However, because freedmen lacked capital, and because planters continued to own the tools, draft animals and land, the freedmen were forced into producing cash crops, mainly cotton, for the land-owners and merchants. Widespread poverty, as well as the falling price of cotton, led to indebtedness among a majority of the freedmen, and poverty among many planters.

Northern officials gave varying reports on conditions involving freedmen in the South. One harsh assessment came from Carl Schurz, who documented dozens of extra-judicial killings in states along the Gulf Coast. He also reported that at least hundreds, perhaps thousands of other African Americans had been killed in this area. In Selma, Alabama, Major J.P. Houston noted that whites who killed 12 African Americans in his district never came to trial. Several other killings never culminated in official cases.

Black women were particularly vulnerable at this time, as convicting a white man of sexually assaulting a black woman was immensely difficult. Since black women were considered to have little virtue, white society held that they could not be raped. This racist mindset contributed to numerous sexual crimes against black women. Black men were construed as being extremely sexually aggressive, and their supposed threats to white women were often used as a pretext for lynching and castrations.

Moderate Responses

During the autumn of 1865, the Radical Republicans responded to the implementation of the Black codes by blocking the readmission of the former rebellious states to Congress. Johnson, however, pushed to allow former Confederate states into the Union as long as their state governments adopted the 13th Amendment (which abolished slavery). The amendment was ratified by December 6, 1865, leading Johnson to believe that Reconstruction was over.

The Radical-controlled Congress, however, rejected Johnson's moderate Presidential Reconstruction, and organized the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, a 15-member panel that devised reconstruction requirements for the Southern states to be restored to the Union.

Johnson vetoed the renewal of the Freedmen's Bureau Bill in February 1866. Although Johnson had sympathies for the plights of the freedmen, he was opposed to federal assistance. An attempt to override the veto failed on February 20, 1866. In response, both the Senate and House passed a joint resolution, disallowing any congressional seat admittance until Congress declared Reconstruction finished.

Illinois senator Lyman Trumbull, leader of the moderate Republicans, recognized that the abolition of slavery was worthless without the protection of basic civil rights, and thus proposed the first Civil Rights Law. Congress quickly passed this Civil Rights bill.