Answer each of the following questions based on the information in your text and other
sources as well.
1. What course did Presidential reconstruction take under Andrew Johnson? Why was he
chosen as Lincoln’s Vice President and how did he alter Lincoln’s reconstruction plan?
How did Congress take the lead in reconstruction?
Johnson was chosen as Lincoln’s Vice President in hopes to portrait a message of unity
and in an effort to gain border-state voters. Lincoln was not concern about selecting Johnson as
vice-president as the vice presidency was normally an inconsequential role. All this changed
when Lincoln was assassinated and the Presidential reconstruction was left in Johnson’s hand.
Under Johnson’s leadership the presidential reconstruction was not what Lincoln had
planned. He appointed provisional governors and urged them to ratify the thirteen amendment.
He granted Southerners amnesty and a pardon by swearing their loyalty to the US constitution
and requested Southern aristocracy to petition a special pardon directly through him, (Almost all
pardon request were grated) placing members of the southern elite as his mercy. Johnson’s plan
did not make southern aristocracy accountable for their actions.
In the South, Black laws (laws ranging from prohibiting black to bear arms to serving on
juries to not being allowed to leave plantation unless they proved they could support themselves)
were passed reducing the free status of African Americans to conditions similar to slavery.
Johnson desires to bring the South back to the union quickly and let Southerners take care of
their own affair raised many questions from the value of the amendment abolishing slavery to
believing wartime sacrifices were in vain and that the south admitted no mistakes by continuing
