Andrew Johnson became president after Lincoln's assassination in April, 1865 and quickly encountered the challenging task of reconstructing the shattered Union. Like Lincoln, he seized total power over the issue himself and refused Congress's authority to participate even more tightly than his forerunner. Johnson started on a policy created to revive the former Confederate states to the civil government with the highest pace and the least change of Southern institutions beyond the eradication of slavery itself. But his plan put former radicals in the political leadership of almost all South states and left Southern blacks to the charities of the persons who had fought so harshly to hold them in servitude.
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