Key Points:
- Unlike most Republicans at the time, Andrew Johnson felt the southern states should be readmitted to the Union as quickly as possible, while also blocking African American suffrage.
- Johnson offered amnesty for all southerners who pledged allegiance to the Union, though this excluded leaders of the Confederacy.
- The Radical Republicans, who held the majority in Congress, opposed Johnson's plan for being lenient, sparking a conflict between Congress and the Presidency.
Immediate Aftermath
At the end of the Civil War, the southern economy lay in ruins. Many cities had been destroyed and there was no longer a slave economy to sustain the region. With the Emancipation Proclamation, some four million former slaves were seeking economic opportunities in a postwar landscape.
Presidential Reconstruction (1865–66):
- Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 to protect the federal government's commitment to states' rights. The Radical Republicans overrode his veto.
- The Reconstruction Act of 1866 was enacted on March 2, 1867. It required southern states to adopt new state constitutions that guaranteed voting rights for African Americans, as well as ratify the Fourteenth Amendment. The act also established military rule in the South, dividing it into five districts overseen by Northern commanders.
Radical Reconstruction (1867–77):
In 1868, Ulysses S. Grant became President and the Radical Republican period of Reconstruction began. In 1870, the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment ensured that African American suffrage was federally protected.
While Radical Reconstruction did enact many progressive policies, it also sparked a great deal of backlash and violence.
Reconstruction ended between 1877-1887.