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  • Essay / Dangerous Reconstruction - 1891

    After the last bullet was fired and the remaining slaves were freed, a problem arose so serious that how the United States responded to it could change race relations in the country for many years. The South's economy, once thriving under slavery, has been completely destroyed by the scars of war, and it is up to the current President and Congress to help restore it to its former state of economic prosperity. This period in American history is known as Reconstruction and soon after the murder of Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, the vice president, was thrust into the spotlight and architected what is known as Presidential Reconstruction . Raised in a relatively poor southern white family, Andrew Johnson developed a prejudice against newly freed African Americans because he viewed them as a threat to poor southern whites. This was later revealed through his stubbornness in power, his economic policies, and the laws he tried to enforce. move into power. Andrew Johnson grew up in a home that was far from ideal for raising a child, born in Raleigh, North Carolina, to Jacob Johnson and Mary McDonough. Andrew experienced poverty from the age of 3, when his father died and his family was plunged into poverty. The youngest of three children, Johnson had to teach himself to read and write. “Unlike the children of the rich, he never had a single day of school in his life: his mother was too poor to afford it.” From a young age Johnson, her mother worked as a seamstress and she barely made money with her stepfather who was a local Taylor. As the years passed, he began to experience prejudice from upper-class white Americans. In Johnson's teenage years in Raleigh, John Daveraux's son, a wealthy...... middle of paper ......end Andrew Johnson was thrust into the spotlight as president when Abraham Lincoln was murdered. A man from a relatively poor upbringing, he developed a dislike for newly freed African Americans because of how they affected poor whites in the South. It was for this reason that he fought laws intended to help African Americans, and enacted economic reforms and was "hands-on." with his politics. Johnson created an environment in which he could make black people slaves without slave title. His fight against civil rights or against freemen was intense and continued throughout his presidency and I consider it one of the main reasons why civil rights did not happen much earlier in the states -United. Thousands murdered and thousands of homes destroyed after the Civil War The South got the angel they prayed for Andrew Johnson became president!