Editing Andrew Johnson (section)

==== Background ====

[[File:Andrew Johnson portrait.jpg|thumb|Official portrait of President Johnson, {{circa|1880}}]]

Upon taking office, Johnson faced the question of what to do with the former Confederacy. President Lincoln had authorized loyalist governments in Virginia, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Tennessee as the Union came to control large parts of those states and advocated a [[ten percent plan]] that would allow elections after ten percent of the voters in any state took an oath of future loyalty to the Union. Congress considered this too lenient; [[Wade–Davis Bill|its own plan]], requiring a majority of voters to take the loyalty oath, passed both houses in 1864, but Lincoln [[pocket veto]]ed it.{{Sfn|Fitzgerald|p=26}}

Johnson had three goals in Reconstruction. He sought a speedy restoration of the states, on the grounds that they had never truly left the Union, and thus should again be recognized once loyal citizens formed a government. To Johnson, African-American suffrage was a delay and a distraction; it had always been a state responsibility to decide who should vote. Second, political power in the Southern states should pass from the planter class to his beloved "plebeians". Johnson feared that the freedmen, many of whom were still economically bound to their former masters, might vote at their direction. Johnson's third priority was election in his own right in 1868, a feat no one who had succeeded a deceased president had managed to accomplish, attempting to secure a Democratic anti-Congressional Reconstruction coalition in the South.{{Sfn|Castel|1979|pp=28–29}}

The Republicans had formed a number of factions. The [[Radical Republican]]s sought voting and other civil rights for African Americans. They believed that the freedmen could be induced to vote Republican in gratitude for emancipation, and that black votes could keep the Republicans in power and Southern Democrats, including former rebels, out of influence. They believed that top Confederates should be punished. The Moderate Republicans sought to keep the Democrats out of power at a national level, and prevent former rebels from resuming power. They were not as enthusiastic about the idea of African-American suffrage as their Radical colleagues, either because of their own local political concerns, or because they believed that the freedman would be likely to cast his vote badly. Northern Democrats favored the unconditional restoration of the Southern states. They did not support African-American suffrage, which might threaten Democratic control in the South.{{Sfn|Castel|1979|pp=18–21}}