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What Is The Key Issue In Chapter 4 Apush Dbq

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1. President Andrew Johnson and his Congress were involved in several conflicts. After the assignation of President Lincoln, Johnson failed to follow through with Lincoln’s ideas for reconstruction. Johnson pardoned all former confederates as long as they agreed to swear a loyalty oath to the Union. This restored confederate political and property rights. Johnson goes on to establish provisional governors and orders them to hold state conventions. Only whites are allowed to vote. New governments are established and they are given authority to in managing local affairs. The bottom line is that after the war nothing changed at this point. The confederates were back in charge. The violence against the former slaves increases and the new southern …show more content…

The first one allowed the Freemen’s Bureau to continue to assist the successful integration of the blacks into southern society. The second act was the Civil Rights bill. Johnson vetoed both bills. Johnson argued “blacks did not deserve the rights of citizenship” (book p.752). This infuriated Congress but they could not override the veto of the Freemen’s Bureau but they did override his veto of the Civil Rights Act.
Congress passed the 14th amendment. All people born in the United States were given citizenship. This obviously included blacks. The federal government would not let the states selectively say who could or could not be citizens. It also gave the white south an option to allow blacks to vote or lose seats in the federal government. This act did not necessarily give the blacks the right to vote but is did guarantee them “equality before the law regardless of race” (book p.573).
Due to Johnson’s lenient policies towards the South, he failed to achieve the nomination of his party for the presidential election of 1868. Congress clearly won the battle by overriding his vetoes of key acts in their effort to change the fabric of Southern

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