With only six weeks of experience as vice president, Andrew Johnson was sworn in by Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase in a private ceremony at the Kirkwood House. While Johnson had also been a target in the assassination plot, his point man had faltered and fled, leaving the vice president unharmed. Johnson instead rushed to Abraham Lincoln’s bedside, only to be present as he died.

While Johnson’s background as the only Southern senator who had remained in Washington, DC, and had strongly supported the preservation of the Union was laudable, the Republicans in Congress were leery about his skills to lead the nation following the war’s conclusion and Lincoln’s death. They believed his inexperience would force him to follow Congress’s lead in reconstruction policy. With that thought in mind, the leaders of the “Radical Republicans” began charting the future’s course and putting their ideas into proposed legislation.

Johnson, however, was not going to easily comply with their demands or their plans to lead reconstruction policy.

Johnson understood that he was heir to Lincoln’s position and supported Lincoln’s plans for a lenient reconciliation, whose key points were only an oath of loyalty for former members of the Confederate government/military and the abolition of slavery. But Johnson also understood that the members of his cabinet wanted harsher terms for readmission to the Union, including the imposition of military rule in all former Confederate states except Tennessee. Led by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, the cabinet was united in its belief that the South must be punished.

If the plan made readmission to the Union too easy and did not have safeguards in place to protect the former slaves, the Republicans feared little would change. With no ownership of property or job prospects, they envisioned a new form of slavery, dominated once again by the planter elite.

Then there was the political reality facing the Republican Party. If former members of the Confederate leadership were not disenfranchised and former slaves were not given the right to vote, the Republican Party feared that the Southern and Northern factions of the Democratic Party might unite and upset control in the House and Senate in the upcoming congressional elections. If that happened and an “easy” plan was implemented, then the war would have accomplished nothing of consequence. Several Republican leaders even envisioned Robert E. Lee easily being elected to the U.S. Senate and quickly gaining national prominence.

How could a Union that had proclaimed an Emancipation Proclamation, recruited black soldiers into the military’s ranks, and promised actions leading to racial equality backpedal on those promises now? Abolitionists in government and in civil society wanted an answer to that question. If the war had claimed the lives of almost 600,000 members of the military — and countless civilian deaths — and the country returned to the “status quo antebellum,” why had a war been fought?

Andrew Johnson had an answer for them.

Johnson had indeed supported the preservation of the Union because he considered himself a constitutionalist. Like Lincoln, he believed that the states in secession had never left the Union and were simply in a state of rebellion. But he also believed in a federalist system that acknowledged states’ rights, and while acknowledging the right to punish certain traitorous Confederate leaders, he believed that the defeat of the Southern states’ attempt to rebel was punishment enough.

Johnson advocated that the only conditions necessary for moving forward with reconstruction were amendments to each state’s constitution declaring the irrevocable abolition of slavery and signed loyalty oaths as a prerequisite for voting privileges. And while black suffrage might be a natural step forward in the future, it should not be a requirement for readmission. The process should be thoughtful and deliberate, with few demands placed on a defeated and demoralized — and impoverished — South. The most certain path to civil disobedience and future potentially armed uncivil disobedience was the imposition of extremely harsh “treaty” terms.

The new president set to work, handing out thousands of pardons for most former Confederate leaders. Many stepped back into positions of power in their states. It is a paradox for most historians — including me — as to why Johnson, who had for 30 years railed against the Southern elites from his position as a man who had risen from poverty and illiteracy, reinstituted the old system so quickly.

We’ll explore that question and the actions that propelled Johnson into direct conflict with his own cabinet and Congress next week. It’s a story…