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Profiles
* Political Thought * Colonial Government * Revolution * Constitution * Birth of Party Politics * War of 1812 * James Monroe: "Era of Good Feeling" and Monroe Doctrine * Jacksonian Democracy * Regional Conflict and Compromise * 1860 Election of Abraham Lincoln * Civil War 1861-62 * Civil War 1863-65 * Reconstruction and Impeachment of President Johnson * Gilded Age and Progressive Era * 1912 Election of Woodrow Wilson * 1916 Election and World War I * Women's Suffrage * Depression and 1932 Election of Franklin D. Roosevelt * Prelude to World War II * Pearl Harbor and Mobilization * World War II: European Theater * World War II: Pacific Theater * Atomic Bomb and End of World War II * 1948 Truman-Dewey Election * 1960 Kennedy-Nixon Election * 1964 Johnson-Goldwater Election * Civil Rights Movement * Vietnam: Evolution of the American Role * Vietnam: Kennedy Administration and Intervention * Vietnam: Johnson Administration and Escalation * Vietnam: Nixon, Ford and Fall of South Vietnam * 1968 Humphrey-Nixon Election * Watergate Scandal and Resignation of President Nixon * 1976 Carter-Ford Election * 1980 & 1984 Reagan Elections * Clinton Impeachment * 2000 Bush-Gore Election * War in Iraq * 2008 Obama-McCain Election * 2012 Obama-Romney Election * 2016 Trump-Clinton Election |
Reconstruction and
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 Draft of Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address Image: Library of Congress
....With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.... Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865 Andrew Johnson and the Presidency Some five weeks after Lincoln delivered his Second Inaugural Address, he was shot on the evening of April 14, 1865, and died the following morning. In attempting to pursue Lincoln's promise to "bind up the nation's wounds," Vice President Andrew Johnson faced significant legal and political barriers. Johnson's ascension to the presidency was the first time that the succession process had come into effect, and some questioned whether the Constitution gave Johnson the right to exercise the full powers of the position or gave him only one vote within the Lincoln cabinet, which would govern as a collective body until the next election. Politically, Johnson's ability to govern "with malice toward none" also was compromised by the context of his selection by Lincoln as a running mate. A native of North Carolina, Johnson had built his political career in Tennessee as a Jacksonian Democrat; when the War broke out, Johnson was the only Senator representing a seceding state who remained loyal to the Union. In 1862, Lincoln appointed him as military governor of occupied Tennessee. |
 Thaddeus Stevens in photo taken by Matthew Brady Image: National Archives
In 1864, despite being a Democrat, Johnson was chosen by Lincoln as his vice presidential candidate, primarily for political reasons to broaden his ticket's appeal to Democrats and others in the cause of "national unity," the new name adopted by the Republican Party to emphasize its attempt to appeal to a wider coalition of supporters. Lincoln understood that his election to his first term in 1860 was largely due to the split in the Democratic Party and the division of votes between its respective factions, and that the Republican base of abolitionists was unlikely to be sufficient to overcome the Democrats if they united behind a single candidate.
After the election, however, the Radical Republicans led by Congressman Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, which had reluctantly gone along with Johnson's joining the ticket in order to help secure Lincoln's re-election, renewed their calls for harsh terms before the states of the defeated Confederacy could regain their rights in the Union. In the wake of Lincoln's assassination, their position gained further strength as they sought to punish the South. |
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Johnson had had few direct contacts with Lincoln. His post-election role was also somewhat curious, given that he was elected in November, but would not formally be sworn as vice president until the following March, joining an incumbent administration which had just won a brutal War without his participation. Reportedly, his apparent inebriation at the Inaugural Ball while delivering a speech, possibly caused by an alcoholic medicine he was taking for a severe cold and fever, embarrassed Lincoln and others in attendance and he was not invited to meetings of the President with his cabinet in the few weeks between his inauguration as vice president and Lincoln's assassination.
Lincoln himself had clashed with the Radical Republicans when in 1863 he issued a plan for reconstruction which included a general amnesty given to all who would take an oath of loyalty to the United States and pledge to obey all federal laws pertaining to slavery; a temporary exclusion of Confederate officials and military leaders from the process; and allow Southern states to establish new governments and elect representatives to Congress when one-tenth of the number of the state's voters who had participated in the 1860 election had taken the loyalty oath. In his last public speech on April 11, 1865, two days before his assassination, Lincoln also extensively defended his views on reconstruction, particularly the criticism he had received for his willingness to accept the re-entry of Louisiana into the Union when 12,000 of its citizens had agreed to a loyalty oath but without its legislature enacting any guarantee of voting rights for freed slaves. |
 Andrew Johnson in photograph taken by Matthew Brady. Image: Library of Congress
Johnson, the Radical Republicans and Reconstruction
While Congress was out of session in 1865, Johnson began to implement his own reconstruction program largely modeled on that suggested by Lincoln in 1863. Johnson's plan included granting blanket pardons to those in the former Confederacy who would take an oath of allegiance; a temporary exclusion of pardons to political leaders and men with wealth over $20,000, who would be required to apply for individual consideration for special presidential pardons; and allowing Southern states that had abolished slavery and repealed their articles of secession to re-assume their powers of government and elect representatives to the Congress. None of the new state constitutions approved on the basis of Johnson's conditions allowed blacks to vote, and Johnson himself opposed the idea. "It would breed a war of races," he wrote in a letter to Southern governors and legislatures, assuring them that the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery, which had been submitted to the states for ratification after Congressional approval in February 1865, would not be interpreted to mandate black suffrage. Southern legislatures also enacted a series of so-called "black codes" imposing restrictions upon freed Negroes that regulated civil and legal rights from marriage to the right to hold and sell property, also effectively forcing many to work as laborers at menial wages for their former slavemasters. The Radical Republicans denounced Johnson's moderate program, and set out to adopt their own much more punitive program for dealing with the post-WAR South. They gained popular support from those angered at seeing many Confederate leaders returning to positions of influence and the re-institution of many of the economic and social practices of slavery under the guise of the "black codes" by the Southern state governments. By the time Congress re-convened in December 1865, most southern state governments were reconstructed, and had elected representatives to Congress. The Radicals' first step was to refuse to seat any senator or representative elected from the old Confederacy. They next passed measures dealing with the former slaves, particularly passage of the Freedman's Bureau Bill in February 1866 authorizing the federal government to provide food, clothing and land to former slaves and empowering military courts to try violations of their civil rights. |
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