Presidential Reconstruction

Andrew Johnson assumes presidency
* unionist democrat from Tennessee
* staunch racist, but hated planter elite
Johnson’s Reconstruction Policy, May 1865:
  * goals:
    * limit black american’s gains
    * empower the lower class white southerners
  * to rejoin the Union, rebel states had to:
    * void secession ordinances
    * refuse to pay CSA war debt
    * ratify the 13th Amendment
  * for individual rebels:
    * anyone owning under $20,000 pardoned automatically
    * elites request pardons (thousands granted)
by October 185:
* new civil governments in all rebel states but Texas
* many former Confederates in leadership

white southerners tried to regain power
tool #1: labor contracts
  * encouraged by Freedmen’s Bureau
  * often with former enslavers
  * often led to debt peonage

tool #2: black codes passed 1865-66 in most former CSA states, MD and KY
  * acknowledged some civil rights:
    * property ownership
    * contracts
    * marriage
  * echoed pre-war slave codes
    * banned black service on juries or militias
    * banned black court testimony against white people
  * vagrancy laws
    * 13th amendment loophole: “except as punishment for a crime”
    * once convicted, state could compel/sell labor
    * effectively outlawed being a cashless or mobile African American
  * apprenticeship laws
    * same purpose for black children
    * black families resisted
black codes sought to keep African Americans stationary and dependent
tool #3: legal and extralegal violence
* Ku Klux Klan and other terrorist groups
* sometimes with support/participation of white officials
goals: intimidate African Americans and their allies
continued throughout Reconstruction and beyond