President Andrew Johnson, PRESIDENTIAL RECONSTUCTION President Andrew Johnson offered relatively mild terms for those states which seceded to reenter the Union. He called on them to declare secession null and void, to cancel the debt accumulated during the war, and to approve the Thirteenth Amendment, which ended slavery. However, he did not press further to guarantee the rights of African Americans. Most white Texans who took the oath of loyalty to the United States, as required, could participate in the restoration of home rule. This lenient policy permitted the majority of Texans to assume previous civil rights. (p. 150.) President Andrew Johnson, A Unionist Democrat from Tennessee, succeeded to the presidency on April 15, 1865, after the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

On June 17, 1865, President Andrew Johnson appointed Andrew Jackson Hamilton, a former U.S. congressman from Texas and a Unionist who had fled to the North, as provisional governor of Texas. As a part of his ongoing plan to implement what historians call Presidential Reconstruction, Johnson instructed Hamilton to call a convention and undertake the necessary steps to form a new civil government in the state. (p. 150.) Andrew Jackson Hamilton Hamilton and his supporters worried that those tied to the Confederate past would attempt to regain their former prominence, and duly block efforts to realize civil rights for black persons.

Position Regarding Freedmen’s Civil Rights Political Parties Position Regarding Freedmen’s Civil Rights Republican Party Unionists Proposed basic civil rights for the freedmen. Conservative Democrats (formerly the Secessionist Democrats) Conservative Unionists Opposed granting any freedoms to blacks beyond emancipation; they favored new legislation specifically restricting the rights of African Americans. See pages 150-151.

The “Black Code” included a contract labor law specifying that laborers wanting to work for more than thirty days would have to enter a binding agreement. Although the “black code” did not mention race specifically, it clearly intended to dictate the way the freemen would earn their living. (p. 154.)

Freedmen’s Bureau See page 155. White Texans detested the outsiders from the North. “carpetbaggers” and “scalawags” With only about 70 field agents and subordinates at its full manpower level, the bureau lacked the personnel to help ex-slaves successfully enter society as free persons. Many Texans saw the bureau as an institution thrust upon them by the Radical Republicans E. M. Gregory was transferred out of the Texas Freedmen’s Bureau because white Texans thought him too sympathetic to the freedmen’s rights

Scalawags and Carpetbaggers

Carpetbagger

A political cartoon depicting the KKK and the Democratic party as continuations of the Confederacy.

A cartoon threatening that the KKK would lynch carpetbaggers, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Independent Monitor, 1868.