NARRATOR
For the first forty-eight days of Andrew Johnson's presidency Southerners waited anxiously to hear what he would demand before allowing them back into the Union. On May 29, 1865, Johnson announced his plan for what would be called "Presidential Reconstruction."

BLIGHT
There was good evidence in 1865 that a lot of white Southerners, the leadership even of the Confederacy, would have accepted relatively harsh policies at that moment. But very soon it became clear that Andrew Johnson wanted a rapid, lenient restoration of the Union with as little alteration of the Constitution and the creation of black civil and political rights as possible.

NARRATOR
Johnson would issue blanket pardons for most former Confederates. The Rebel states would be encouraged to form new governments quickly. Washington would not interfere. The president's leniency surprised many in the North. Southerners responded with relief.

FONER
Johnson actually sets only the most minimal requirements. All they have to do is admit, "We lost the Civil War. The Civil War is over. Slavery and secession are dead." Other than that, there are no requirements.

NARRATOR
Johnson was harder on the planter aristocracy. He insisted that wealthy planters and Confederate leaders write him personally and beg for clemency.

FONER
This basically eliminates the planter class from leadership of Southern politics. If you're not pardoned, you can't vote, you can't hold office, and you can't get your property back if it's been seized by the federal government.

NARRATOR
Andrew Johnson had no sympathy for wealthy planters. He had risen from poverty and identified with poor white southerners, who, before the war, had far outnumbered the slave owners. Now, he was anxious to protect poor whites from what they saw as a new threat.

WALKER
Poor whites have to face the fact that now that black people are free means that they have to compete with this new element for livelihood, for social position, and political power, ultimately.

FONER
Johnson's aim is to bring the white South and the white North back together. African Americans just do not play a role in Johnson's vision of the postwar South, other than to go back to work and be landless and rightless plantation laborers.

NARRATOR
Johnson's contempt for the freedmen infuriated many in Washington, and none more than Thaddeus Stevens. The congressman from Pennsylvania had been a fierce abolitionist long before the war. Within the Republican Party he led a small, vocal faction known as the Radicals.

FONER
These were principled men. Before the war they had been the strongest Republicans opposing the expansion of slavery. During the Civil War they had been the first ones to call for arming of black troops, for issuing an Emancipation Proclamation. Long before there was any conceivable political benefit to be gained from supporting the rights of black people, they were doing it.

BLIGHT
The Radical Republicans had a vision of what Reconstruction should be. They believed it should be longer in duration. They believed the Southern states had left the union and destroyed their status as states. They had to be reinvented. To Thaddeus Stevens, Reconstruction meant not only safeguarding and preserving the essential results of the Civil War, but in his vision it meant remaking the South. It meant the increase of democracy in terms of representation. It meant the spread of the right of suffrage.

NARRATOR
The Radicals' hard line marginalized them within their own party. Most Republicans feared the Radicals' position on black rights would drive away white voters in the North.

WALKER
It is the radical wing which is the most sympathetic to black people. The party in general was committed to a limited program of civil rights, protection of property, education, et cetera. But the party is not in any way committed to any sort of radical restructuring of Southern society.

NARRATOR
Johnson's Reconstruction plan could not be challenged until Congress convened in December. That summer, Radical leaders could only watch as scores of planters descended on Washington pleading to be pardoned. Whose petition would be denied or granted was uncertain. Still, former Confederates were hopeful. "White men alone," President Johnson told one senator, "must manage the South."