His vetoes caused a permanent rupture between the president and Congress. The second defined all persons born in the United States as national citizens, who were to enjoy equality before the law.Ī combination of personal stubbornness, belief in states' rights, and deeply-held racist convictions led Johnson to reject these bills. The first extended the life of an agency Congress had created in 1865 to oversee the transition from slavery to freedom. Congress refused to seat the Congressmen and Senators elected from the Southern states, and in early 1866 passed and sent to Johnson the Freedmen's Bureau and Civil Rights Bills. But the more numerous moderate Republicans hoped to work with Johnson, while modifying his program. When Congress assembled in December 1865, Radical Republicans called for the abrogation of the Johnson governments and the establishment of new ones based on equality before the law and manhood suffrage. The inability of the white South's leaders to accept emancipation undermined Northern support for Johnson's policies. African-Americans strongly resisted the implementation of these measures. They responded by enacting the Black Codes, laws that required blacks to sign yearly labor contracts, designated unemployed blacks as vagrants who could be hired out to white landowners, and in other ways sought to reestablish plantation discipline. Apart from the requirement that they abolish slavery, repudiate secession, and abrogate the Confederate debt, these governments, elected by whites alone, were granted a free hand in managing their affairs. He also outlined how new state governments would be created. Johnson offered a pardon to all Southern whites except Confederate leaders and wealthy planters (although most of these subsequently received individual pardons), restoring their political rights and all property except for slaves. In May, he inaugurated the period of Presidential Reconstruction (1865-67). Upon Lincoln's assassination in April 1865, Andrew Johnson became president. In his last speech, in April 1865, Lincoln himself expressed the view that some Southern blacks - the 'very intelligent' and those who had served in the Union army - ought to enjoy the right to vote. Some Republicans were already convinced that equal rights for the former slaves must accompany the South's readmission to the Union. In 1864, Congress enacted and Lincoln pocket vetoed the Wade-Davis Bill, which proposed to delay the formation of new Southern governments until a majority of voters had taken a loyalty oath. Although it was put into operation in parts of the Union-occupied South, none of the new governments achieved broad local support or were recognized by Congress. To Lincoln, the plan was more an attempt to weaken the Confederacy than a blueprint for the postwar South.

When 10 percent of a state's voters had taken such an oath, they could establish a new state government. This offered a pardon to all Southerners, except Confederate leaders, who took an oath affirming loyalty to the Union and support for emancipation. In December 1863, less than a year after he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, President Abraham Lincoln announced the first comprehensive program for Reconstruction, the Ten Percent Plan. The national debate over Reconstruction began during the Civil War. In the South, a politically mobilized black community joined with white allies to bring the Republican party to power, and with it a redefinition of the purposes and responsibilities of government. At the national level, new laws and constitutional amendments permanently altered the federal system and the definition of American citizenship. Reconstruction witnessed far-reaching changes in America's political life. It was also a time when the entire nation, but especially the South, was forced to come to grips with the legacy of slavery and the consequences of emancipation.

Traditionally portrayed by historians as a sordid time when vindictive Radical Republicans fastened black supremacy upon the defeated Confederacy, Reconstruction has lately been viewed more sympathetically, as a laudable experiment in interracial democracy. Reconstruction (1865-1877), the period that followed the American Civil War, is perhaps the most controversial era in American history. Administering the Oath of Allegiance to Confederate soldiers

Oath of loyalty reconstruction