HY 104 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Reconstruction Era, White Southerners
29 May 2018
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Presidential Reconstruction
Like Lincoln, Johnson wanted to restore the Union in as little time as possible.
While Congress was in recess, the president began implementing his plans,
which became known as Presidential Reconstruction.He returned
confiscated property to white southerners, issued hundreds of pardons to
former Confederate officers and government officials, and undermined the
Freedmen’s Bureau by ordering it to return all confiscated lands to white
landowners. Johnson also appointed governors to supervise the drafting of
new state constitutions and agreed to readmit each state provided it ratified
the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery. Hoping that
Reconstruction would be complete by the time Congress reconvened a few
months later, he declared Reconstruction over at the end of 1865.
The Joint Committee on Reconstruction
Radical and moderate Republicans in Congress were furious that Johnson
had organized his own Reconstructionefforts in the South without their
consent. Johnson did not offer any security for former slaves, and his pardons
allowed many of the same wealthy southern landowners who had held power
before the war to regain control of the state governments. To challenge
Presidential Reconstruction, Congress established the Joint Committee on
Reconstruction in late 1865, and the committee began to devise stricter
requirements for readmitting southern states.
The End of the Freedmen’s Bureau
Early in 1866, Congress voted to renew the charter that had created
the Freedmen’s Bureau, in retaliation for the fact that Johnson had stripped
the bureau of its power. Congress also revised the charter to include special
legal courts that would override southern courts. Johnson,
however, vetoed the renewed Freedmen’s Bureau, once again using the
states’ rights argument that the federal government should not deprive the
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