Presidential Reconstruction - Johnson's respone

• Johnson hoped to restore the South to the Union on his terms - he moved to conciliate the traditional white Southern elite because he believed : loyalty of white Southerners needed to be restored as the South was to be part of the Union again; federal intervention in the political, economic and social systems of individual states was against states rights; black Americans were not equals of white Americans and should not be given the vote; conciliatory policies towards the South were the best way to ensure his own re-election in 1868.
• Any Southern state that accepted the end of slavery and rejected the Confederacy was readmitted into the Union. Southern whites speedily reasserted their supremacy . White officials who had saved the Confederacy were now elected to govern the southern states, and they introduced 'Black Codes' to ensure blacks did not gain economic, political, social and legal equality.
• Black Codes : economic inequality - blacks were not allowed to buy or rent land; social inequality - blacks were banned from schools; legal inequality - roughly 500 white men indicted by Texas courts for murdering black people, not one was convicted; political inequality - not allowed to vote.