ABSTRACT
Lincoln had publicly endorsed limited suffrage for Southern blacks just days before his death, but this did not sit easy with many Americans. The uncertainty of the Southern economy and the destruction of the Southern countryside demanded governmental attention. In May 1865, Johnson began an era of Presidential Reconstruction that lasted for two years. He offered immediate pardons to all white Southerners, except for those who held leadership positions in the Confederacy or were wealthy planters. Congress, irritated by Johnson's policies, passed the Reconstruction Acts of 1867. With these acts came a new era, one of Radical Reconstruction. Congress split the South into five military districts and explicitly determined how Southern governments would be established.
