Congressional Reconstruction

• Vice President Andrew Johnson (office April 1865, after Lincoln assassination) aimed a quick return to normalcy
• Once Southerners swore an oath of loyalty to the Union, they would elect state assemblies which would ratify the Thirteenth Amendment
• ratify = officially approve
• For Johnson (democrat), not from North but Tennessee border state, the issue was the Union not the rights of AA
• With a sympathetic president, the Southern state assemblies had the confidence to pass highly discriminatory Black Codes
• Black Codes = Southern States' laws to control freed slaves
• BC restricted the rights of AA to compete against white Americans to work
• BC gave states the right to punish vagrants and unemployed former slaves
• BC gave states right to return vagrants and unemployed former slaves to forced labour
• BC allowed those who attacked AA to go unpunished, with state officials often participating in attacks
• Even if state government and president didn't want change, Congress took action
• the Radical Republicans (led by Representative Thaddeus Stevens and Senator Charles Sumner) were persuasive and influential advocators for change
• RR helped Congress to establish a federal institution in March 1865 = Freedmen's Bureau to help emancipated slaves