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Presidential Reconstruction |
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Digital History ID 3102
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After helping to push through the 13th Amendment, abolishing
slavery, the President sought to quickly restore the rebel states
to the Union. He considered Reconstruction a "restoration"
and wanted to quickly readmit the former Confederate states after
they had repudiated their ordinances of secession, accepted the
13th Amendment, repudiated the Confederate debt, and pledged loyalty
to the Union.
Johnson's vision of Reconstruction clashed with that of many
Republicans. He vetoed a string of Republican-backed measures,
including an extension of the Freedman's Bureau and the first
Civil Rights bill. He ordered black families evicted from land
on which they had been settled by the U.S. Army. He acquiesced
in the Black Codes which southern state governments enacted to
reduce former slaves to the status of dependent plantation laborers.
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