the president in 1868. The Republicans
used the Tenure of Office Act, which
they had passed the year before. This
prevented the president from removing
from office anyone who had been
appointed by a past president unless the
Senate ratified his decision. Johnson
had suspended his secretary of war,
Edwin Stanton, and when the Senate
failed to ratify his decision, he was
impeached. He survived Senate
conviction by a single vote, but was
now virtually powerless.Military districts
On March 2, 1867, Congress passed the
First Reconstruction Act. This divided
the South into five military districts,
each under the command of a U.S.
general. One of the tasks of the
governors was to ensure voting rights
for blacks in the former Confederate
states. To guarantee black voting rights,
Congress also authored the Fifteenth
Amendment, which stated that the
right to vote could not be denied on
account of race. Congress also outlined
its terms for readmitting Southern
states. New state constitutions were
required that affirmed black voting
rights and ratified the Fourteenth
Amendment. Until this was done,
the Southern states would stay under
occupation and Southern legislators
would not be allowed entry to Congress.THE POLITICS OF RECONSTRUCTION
Johnson was succeeded as president in 1869
by Ulysses S. Grant, whose well-intentioned
Reconstruction policies were blocked by
Southern Democrats as they won back
control of the former Confederate states.READMISSION TO THE UNION
By 1870, all the Southern states had ratified
the Fourteenth Amendment and were
readmitted to the Union. At first they were under
Republican rule, but elections were accompanied
by mounting violence in the South, first from
the Ku Klux Klan, then by groups such as the
White League 342–43 ❯❯. Freedmen were
supposed to enjoy the same rights as whites, but
voting discrimination, in the form of poll taxes
and literacy tests, became widespread.THE REDEEMER MOVEMENT
In Grant’s second term, Southern Democrats, or
“Redeemers,” gradually won control of the
state legislatures 342–43 ❯❯ and by 1877 all
were in Democrat hands 344–45 ❯❯.AFTER
Johnson’s Reconstruction in practice
Published on September 1, 1866, in Harper’s Weekly,
this cartoon by Thomas Nast fiercely attacks Johnson’s
pro-Southern policies. In the center, he is portrayed as
Shakespeare’s Iago deceiving Othello (a black veteran).