NARRATOR
In his first speech after the Union victory, Lincoln alluded to the enormous challenges Reconstruction would bring. He even suggested that some black men in the South might get the vote. His words infuriated many, including a Confederate sympathizer who assassinated the president three days later.

With Lincoln gone, the question of how to put the country back together again took on even greater urgency.

Northerners were exhausted by four years of war. Most had hoped Lincoln would reconcile North and South and get the states get back to normal relations as soon as possible. But there was no consensus on how to achieve this. Just as uncertain was the future of millions of black men and women freed into a society where many whites, North and South, questioned the idea of any rights for former slaves.

TUNNELL
The notion of civil rights for blacks was revolutionary. Nineteenth century America's whole notion of what it meant to be an American was all wrapped up in whiteness. An American was a person with white skin.

BLIGHT
Here you have the great questions of Reconstruction immediately are what people faced: who will rule in the South, who will rule in federal government, and will the dimensions of black freedom be?

NARRATOR
All eyes looked to Washington. Former Confederates held their breath, and steeled themselves for the worst.

AYERS
The South doesn't know what to expect. Will there be punishment for leaders? Will there be land confiscated? Will there be an occupying army? And a lot of people imagined that these traitors, these people who had tried to destroy the United States, should be executed, should be imprisoned.

NARRATOR
No one was sure what to expect from the new president. Andrew Johnson was from Tennessee, but he had fiercely opposed the Confederate secession and was the only Southern senator who refused to give up his seat in Congress.

AYERS
Andrew Johnson embodies a lot of the hopes that Abraham Lincoln has that the Union can be put back together easily. But Andrew Johnson had been an outspoken enemy of the big planters, who he blamed for causing secession.

FONER
In Tennessee politics, he saw himself as a spokesman for the poor whites. He owned a slave or two, but he was not a member of the plantation aristocracy. In fact, he resented them very much.

NARRATOR
In his first speech after taking office, Johnson warned that traitors had to be punished. But Johnson shared the white South's desire to keep blacks subordinate. Frederick Douglass, the renowned black leader, got his own impression of Johnson when the two met for the first time at Lincoln's second inaugural.

TUNNELL
The very first expression that came over Johnson's face was one of scorn and derision. And Douglass concluded that that expression was the true index of his heart. Douglass turned to a companion and said, "Whatever else this man may be, he is no friend of our race."