B
JOHNSON CONTINUES LINCOLN’S POLICIES
In
May 1865, with Congress in recess, Johnson
announced his own plan, Presidential
Reconstruction. He declared that each remaining
Confederate state—Alabama, Florida, Georgia,
Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and
Texas—could be readmitted to the Union if it would
meet several conditions. Each state would have to
withdraw its secession, swear allegiance to the
Union, annul Confederate war debts, and ratify the
Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery.
To the dismay of Thaddeus Stevens and the
Radicals, Johnson’s plan differed little from
Lincoln’s. The one major difference was that
Johnson wished to prevent most high-ranking
Confederates and wealthy Southern landowners
from taking the oath needed for voting privileges.
The Radicals were especially upset that Johnson’s
plan, like Lincoln’s, failed to address the needs of
former slaves in three areas: land, voting rights, and
protection under the law.
If Johnson’s policies angered Radicals, they relieved most white Southerners.
Johnson’s support of states’ rights instead of a strong central government reassured
the Southern states. Although Johnson supported abolition, he was not in favor of
former slaves gaining the right to vote—he pardoned more than 13,000 former
Confederates because he believed that “white men alone must manage the South.”
The remaining Confederate states quickly agreed to Johnson’s terms. Within
a few months, these states—all except Texas—held conventions to draw up new
state constitutions, to set up new state governments, and to elect
representatives to Congress. However, some Southern states did not fully comply
with the conditions for returning to the Union. For example, Mississippi did not
ratify the Thirteenth Amendment.
Despite such instances of noncompliance, in December 1865, the newly
elected Southern legislators arrived in Washington to take their seats. Fifty-eight
of them had previously sat in the Congress of the Confederacy, six had served in
the Confederate cabinet, and four had fought against the United States as
Confederate generals. Johnson pardoned them all—a gesture that infuriated the
Radicals and made African Americans feel they had been betrayed. In an 1865 edi-
torial, an African-American newspaper publisher responded to Johnson’s actions.
A PERSONAL VOICE PHILIP A. BELL
“ The war does not appear to us to be ended, nor rebellion suppressed. They have
commenced reconstruction on disloyal principles. If rebel soldiers are allowed to
mumble through oaths of allegiance, and vote Lee’s officers into important offices,
and if Legislatures, elected by such voters, are allowed to define the provisions of
the Amnesty Proclamation, then were our conquests vain. . . . Already we see the
fruits of this failure on the part of Government to mete out full justice to the loyal
blacks, and retribution to the disloyal whites.
”
—quoted in Witness for Freedom: African American Voices on Race, Slavery, and Emancipation
PRESIDENTIAL RECONSTRUCTION COMES TO A STANDSTILL
When the
39th Congress convened in December 1865, the Radical Republican legislators,
led by Thaddeus Stevens, disputed Johnson’s claim that Reconstruction was com-
plete. Many of them believed that the Southern states were not much different
378 C
HAPTER 12
MAIN IDEA
MAIN IDEA
B
Contrasting
How did
the views of
Presidents Lincoln
and Johnson on
Reconstruction
differ from the
views of the
Radicals?
Former
Confederate
officers George
Washington Custis
Lee, Robert E. Lee,
and Walter Taylor,
photographed in
1865
▼
B. Answer Both
presidents
favored a
lenient
approach to
Southerners,
while the
Radicals wanted
to punish the
South severely
and wanted to
grant African
Americans civil
rights, including
the vote.
