580 ★ CHAPTER 15 “What Is Freedom?”: Reconstruction
of Presidential Reconstruction (1865–1867). Johnson offered a pardon (which
restored political and property rights, except for slaves) to nearly all white
southerners who took an oath of allegiance to the Union. He excluded Con-
federate leaders and wealthy planters whose prewar property had been valued
at more than $20,000. This exemption suggested at first that Johnson planned
a more punitive Reconstruction than Lincoln had intended. Most of those
exempted, however, soon received individual pardons from the president.
Johnson also appointed provisional governors and ordered them to call state
conventions, elected by whites alone, that would establish loyal governments
in the South. Apart from the requirement that they abolish slavery, repudiate
secession, and refuse to pay the Confederate debt— all unavoidable conse-
quences of southern defeat— he granted the new governments a free hand in
managing local affairs.
At first, most northerners believed Johnson’s policy deserved a chance to
succeed. The conduct of the southern governments elected under his program,
however, turned most of the Republican North against the president. By and
large, white voters returned prominent Confederates and members of the old
elite to power. Reports of violence directed against former slaves and northern
visitors in the South further alarmed Republicans.
The Black Codes
But what aroused the most opposition to Johnson’s Reconstruction policy were
the Black Codes, laws passed by the new southern governments that attempted
to regulate the lives of the former slaves. These laws granted blacks certain
rights, such as legalized marriage, ownership of property, and limited access
to the courts. But they denied them the rights to testify against whites, to serve
on juries or in state militias, or to vote. And in response to planters’ demands
that the freedpeople be required to work on the plantations, the Black Codes
declared that those who failed to sign yearly labor contracts could be arrested
and hired out to white landowners. Some states limited the occupations open
to blacks and barred them from acquiring land, and others provided that judges
could assign black children to work for their former owners without the con-
sent of the parents. “We are not permitted to own the land whereon to build
a schoolhouse or a church,” complained a black convention in Mississippi.
“Where is justice? Where is freedom?”
Clearly, the death of slavery did not automatically mean the birth of free-
dom. But the Black Codes so completely violated free labor principles that they
called forth a vigorous response from the Republican North. Wars— especially
civil wars— often generate hostility and bitterness. But few groups of rebels
in history have been treated more leniently than the defeated Confederates. A
handful of southern leaders were arrested but most were quickly released.