Question

In what ways is our nation still dealing with the issues over which Johnson and Congress clashed?

Answer 1

In 1865 President Andrew Johnson implemented a plan of Reconstruction that gave the white South a free hand in regulating the transition from slavery to freedom and offered no role to blacks in the politics of the South.

In the final years of the American Civil War and the Reconstruction that followed, Congress repeatedly debated the rights of the millions of black former slaves. By 1869, amendments had been passed to abolish slavery and provide citizenship and equal protection under the laws.