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Is Andrew Johnson's Reconstruction: Is It Possible To Regulate African Americans?

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The new Reconstruction has given freedom to more than four million slaves. This is great achievement for equality in the United States of America. African-Americans are now able to work as free men. Johnson’s Presidential Reconstruction Program led mad southern states loyal to the Union and slave free. However, southern states enacted bills to regulate African-American activity which led to the Civil Rights Act. At the end of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln feared that an emancipation would drive the border slave states loyal to the Union into the Confederacy. Also, he feared that this would anger conservative northerners. However, slaves convinced Lincoln that emancipation became a military and political necessity. Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation which freed the slaves. Lincoln also pushed that free and enlisted blacks deserved the right to vote; however, he was murdered days later so Reconstruction plans fell into his successor. In May 1865, President Andrew Johnson presented his Reconstruction plans. Johnson though that the federal government had no right to determine voting requirements as other issues at the state level. Also, he stated that the southern states never lost the right to govern themselves. Under Johnson’s …show more content…

These laws restricted blacks’ activity to secure their availability as a labor force. These acts made Congress furious and in early 1866 Congress passed the Freedmen’s Bureau and Civil Rights Bills and sent them to Johnson for approval. These bills extended the life of the Freedmen’s Bureau and stated that all persons born in the United States as citizens shared equality under the law. Johnson decided to veto the bills which led to a permanent rupture to his relationship with Congress which would conclude in Johnson’s impeachment in 1868. The Civil Rights Act later became the first major bill to successfully become a law after presidential

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Abraham Lincoln’s vs Andrew Johnson’s Reconstruction Plan Lincoln shared the uncommon belief that the confederate states could still be part of the union and that the cause of the rebellion was only a few within the states which lead him to begin the reconstruction in December of 1863. This resulted in plans with lenient guidelines and although they were challenged by Wade-Davis Bill, Lincoln still rejected his ideas and kept his policies in place. Lincoln also allowed land to be given the newly freed slave or homeless white by distributing the land that had been confiscated from former land owners however this fell through once Johnson took office. After Lincoln’s death when Johnson was elected many things started to turn away from giving blacks equal rights and resulted in many things such a black codes which kept newly freed slaves from having the same rights as whites. When Lincoln first acted after the civil war, he offered policies that would allow the confederate slaves to become part of the union again and would allow a pardon for those states.

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1. “How did Lincoln and Johnson each approach reconstruction?” Johnson did not have Lincoln’s moral sense and political judgement when it came to reconstruction. “As wartime president, Lincoln had offered amnesty to all but high-ranking Confederates” (464). Lincoln had proposed that when ten percent of a rebellious states voters had sworn loyalty (taken an oath), then the state would be restored to the Union as long as it had approved the thirteenth amendment to abolish slavery.

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362) These government measures gifted African Americans the rights and benefits of citizenship. However, planters resented these advancements and wished to regain their previous social and political dominance. When the First Reconstruction Act was passed in 1867, political activity among African Americans surged, with “approximately 735,000 black and 635,000 white voters” enrolled in the ten unreconstructed states, and black electoral majorities in five states, as reported by Faragher. (Out of Many, p. 372) After African Americans were granted the right to vote in February 1869 with the passing of the Fifteenth Amendment, “Congress required the four remaining unreconstructed states to ratify both the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments before readmission,” as stated by Faragher.

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President Abraham Lincoln came across multiple issues during the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation. Some of the political issues had to deal with the border states. In the back of his mind, he mostly wanted to get rid of slavery, but the border states don’t want slavery to be abolished, and Lincoln knew this. Lincoln didn’t want to start the war because he wanted to seem as the good guy trying to defend himself, and not attack someone else, so he can persuade the border states to join his side. Along with this, he didn’t know when to publish the Emancipation Proclamation because he didn’t want to seem desperate for help.

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One of these bills extended the life the Freedmen’s Bureau, which was originally only for one year. The other, the Civil Rights Bill of 1866, defined all persons born in the United States as citizens, and also listed rights that they had regardless of their race. President Johnson vetoed both bills, saying that they centralized power in the National government, and deprived states of the ability to regulate their own affairs. In April of 1866, the Civil Rights Bill became the first major law in American history to be passed over a Presidential

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Andrew Johnson, a southerner himself, believed that the blacks should have no role in the reconstruction. Between 1865 and 1867 Johnson ordered new provisional governors to establish new all white governments, that ruled similarly to the racist confederates before them. Some things did change for the former slaves as Universities and primary and secondary schools were established for them by the Freedman’s Bureau. Now the freedman’s bureau didn’t grant the slaves the one thing they wanted most, land. To the blacks, land was as essential part of truly becoming free.

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As Commander in Chief, Lincoln initially wanted to ameliorate relations with the Confederacy by having them return to the Union and cease rebellion. So President Lincoln was cautious to abolish slavery. As he once wrote in a letter, “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy Slavery.” Fearing the South’s advance in the War, President Lincoln utilized the Union victory at Antietam, to deliver his decree. The Emancipation Proclamation did three things: it undermined the Confederacy's slave economy, created an influx of soldiers for the Union and made the Civil War explicitly about the institution of slavery.

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Efforts from the congress after the rejection of President Andrew Johnson’s Reconstruction Plan involved enacting laws and amendments that enforced equal rights only to the now freed male slaves and gave them the right to vote and hold office. The government, confronted with formation of anti-equality groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and many others that opposed equality, soon enacted the Black Codes. The congress then passed the Freedmen’s Bureau and Civil Rights Bills in hopes to settle the quarrels of slavery by declaring all born in the U.S as citizens but unfortunately, Johnson declined these bills. To retaliate, the Civil Rights Act

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Although it was meant to stop the oppression in this South, it endured and Southern States began to pass so-called Jim Crow laws. These laws “legally enforced racial segregation by forcing blacks to separate and substandard schools, denying them access to restaurants, and requiring them to use separate entrances to public buildings, among many other measures”(Riggs). This was the same case for The Civil Rights Act of 1875 due to the different branches of government disagreeing with each other. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 explicitly granted and protected the rights of African Americans and gave the federal government to intervene in state affairs (OpenStax). However, the Supreme Court did not agree as the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875 as unconstitutional for the reason that the Constitution only can protect acts of private discrimination, and not state discrimination (Riggs).

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The reconstruction era was a wonderful and horrible time for African Americans. Because the former slaves were free in all states, most were uneducated, jobless, and had no opportunity in the south. With the president to distracted with fraud rings, and the North getting tiered of the south political problems, its no wonder the reconstruction era came to an

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African Americans were free during Reconstruction, because of the new rights given to them. The first reason to why they were free is from Document A, which shows the 14th Amendment that states anyone born or living in the United States has the right to be a citizen and they cannot be deprived by anyone of life, liberty or property. This represents freedom because no

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Before the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln's main goal was to preserve the Union, not end slavery. However, as the war progressed, he began to realize that slavery was the root cause of the

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The Reconstruction Era was the rebuilding of the United States after the Civil War. Race issues were prominent during this era. Initially, freed people acquired no roles. They were not allowed to vote, to sue, seat in juries, testify, or sit in office. Congress passed the fourteenth amendment stating any individual born or naturalized in the United States was a citizen and had full civil rights.

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The reconstruction period was a failure because African Americans, mainly males, were not treated with equality although the constitution said that the they were free and had the right to vote, be educated and had the right to liberty, life and the pursuit to happiness. Organizations, like the KKK, were created to harm freed slaves and their families. Laws were created such as the Black Codes restricting former slaves from their rights. African Americans endured a lot of violence over the years. “In Grayson, Texas, a white man and two friends murdered three former slaves because the wanted to ‘ thin the niggers out and drive them to their hole’”.

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During his presidency, Congress ratified the 13th-Amendment that abolished slavery in 1865. In addition, President Johnson made contributions to the black people by vetoing bills that increased protection offered by Freedman Bureau. His vetoes also nullified the Black Codes and guaranteed full citizenship and equal rights to black people. This brought up the Civil Rights Act of 1866, an act that granted citizenships and same rights that both black and white enjoyed. As a result, the Civil Rights Act set up the basis for the 14th amendments that was also later ratified in 1866.

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