Castel, 1979). That Reconstruction would take place, was already accepted. How to implement it, with an even hand was the question.
Acting under the pardon power of the Constitution, President Lincoln issued on December 8, 1863, a Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction under which any Rebel state could form a Union government whenever a number equal to 10 percent of those who had voted in 1860 took an oath of allegiance to the Constitution and Union. Participants, with certain exceptions, would then receive a presidential pardon. Individuals excluded were civil and diplomatic officers of the Confederacy, high officers of the Confederate Army and Navy, judges, and congressmen and military officers of the United States that had left their posts to aid the rebellion (Tindall, 1984, 674).
Lincoln's assassination on April 14, 1865, catapulted Andrew Johnson into the Presidency. Johnson's first public statements on Reconstruction appeared to be compatible with the views of his Republican colleagues who had been most active the advocacy of civil liberties for blacks. Republican senators, for whom these issues represented passionate personal convictions, greeted the new president with high spirits. The feeling was that confrontation over Reconstruction would not be an issue between Congress and the new President (Byrd, 1990).
While it is true that Congress and the President effectively did differ over matters of procedure and substance, the question of leadership is what eventually drove a wedge between the two branches of government. The Civil War was a culmination of decades of conflict and concern over slavery and other domestic issues. The crises of the late 1850s and early 1860s brought to the fore top leaders with rising political hopes and expectations. These individuals had learned to operate the machinery of groups, parties, nominations, elections, legislatures, and bureaucracies. Although Andrew Johnson, th...