ABSTRACT
After Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in April 1865, his Tennessee-born vice president, Andrew Johnson, assumed the nation's highest office. Johnson quickly proposed to exclude African Americans completely from the Reconstruction process, saying that 'white men alone must govern the South'. With Union soldiers occupying the region and black men given the right to vote, large numbers of African Americans were elected to help rewrite the state constitutions. A large majority of black elected officials were well educated, but racist Democrats chafed under what they called 'Negro rule'. Venal and racist propaganda claimed that all black voters and officeholders were illiterate and incompetent lie that was later enshrined in folk memory and history books. The fact remains that both blacks and poor Southern whites benefited greatly from Radical Reconstruction. By 1877, Northern Republicans had grown exhausted from enforcing Reconstruction, and Southern conservatives, acting through terror and propaganda, regained control of the state governments.
