Andrew Johnson's Black Codes Research Paper

When Andrew Johnson became president, the United States was dealt a new set of problems. President Johnson was opposed to the idea of African Americans as equal counterparts of white men and believed that African Americans were built for manual labor. He did not intervene when southern states began to rebel and then espoused set of laws called the Black Codes. These laws were used to restrict the lives of freedmen across the southern states, and in turn, was another form of slavery without being branded as such. Under these laws, if an African American man was not employed, he was jailed and then auctioned off. The South was pleased with the Black Codes, but the North was not. The North did not support the South’s Black Codes and thought these

laws were unacceptable, unfair, and a step in the wrong direction. Northerners claimed that the South was trying to bring back slavery and were outraged that the South was trying to control its own political life. To accept Johnson’s plan meant, to many northerners, that the civil war, the men lost, the destruction, the blood, sweat, and tears were for nothing. Northern Republicans were faced with a quandary: they wanted to avoid a wrangle with the president, but they were appalled by the constricting essence of these laws.
Arguments from both sides exploded in first meeting of Congress after the civil war over reconstruction. The Republicans argued that the President was not fit to have power, whereas the democrats sided with Johnson. Many democrats thought that the South should be able to run its own political life without Congress’s involvement. Congress argued that it was not wise to allow southern states this kind of political freedom so close after the war. The chaos lasted until the Black Codes were nullified due to the Civil Rights Act of 1866. Finally, the United States was moving in the right direction.