Introduction - Page 2

During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln announced a lenient plan, with suffrage limited to whites, to attract Southern Confederates back to the Union. By the end of his life, however, Lincoln had come to favor extending the right to vote to educated blacks and former soldiers.

Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson, in 1865 put into effect his own Reconstruction plan, which gave the white South a free hand in establishing new governments.Many Northerners became convinced that Johnson's policy, and the actions of the governments he established, threatened to reduce African Americans to a condition similar to slavery, while allowing former "rebels" to regain political power in the South.

As a result, Congress overturned Johnson's program.

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Between 1866 and 1869, Congress enacted new laws and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments to the Constitution, guaranteeing blacks' civil rights and giving black men the right to vote.

These measures for the first time enshrined in American law the principle that the rights of citizens could not be abridged because of race. And they led directly to the creation of new governments in the South elected by blacks as well as white - America's first experiment in interracial democracy.