ed Lincoln from the scene of action at a
time when North and South alike stood most in need of his kind heart,
tact, and firmness. Andrew Johnson succeeded to a task for which he was
ill-fitted. Conceited, obstinate, and pugnacious, he began by alarming
the South with threats of wholesale punishment for the "crime of
treason," and ended by alienating his own party through his slack
methods of re-establishing the States. Johnson declared, and no doubt
honestly, that he was carrying out Lincoln's ideas. In May, 1865, he
offered amnesty to all but certain excepted classes, mainly civil and
military leaders, upon condition of an oath to support the Constitution,
including its Thirteenth Amendment, forbidding slavery. Though the
proclamation declaring this to be in force did not issue till December
18, 1865, it had been approved by Congress the preceding February.

President Johnson then proceeded to reorganize the state governments.
For each seceded State, except the four already reconstructed, he
appointed a provincial governor. The governor called a State convention.
Only whites who had taken the amnesty oath could elect delegates, or
themselves be elected, to this convention. At the instance of the
President the convention adopted a constitution or legislation which
forbade slavery, declared the ordinance of secession null and void, and
repudiated the Confederate debt. The convention then appointed times and
places for the election of a legislature and a permanent governor. In a
few months the governmental machinery had been set in motion in all the
late Confederate States, and in December senators and representatives
from all except Texas were knocking at the doors of Congress.

Thus far the President had had full sway. But upon the re-assembling of
Congress in December, it became apparent that he and his party were not
in harmony. Congress, still overwhelmingly republican, refused to admit
the southern delegates, and appointed a committee to investigate the
condition of affairs in the southern States. Its report was anything but
re-assuring, and Congress, mainly under the lead of Thaddeus Stevens,
boldly proceeded to rip up the entire presidential work.

Several considerations led Congress to this course. They denied the
President's right, on his own sole authority, to re-establish permanent
governments in the States in question. Furthermore, the new state
governments were declared unlawful because their constitutions