Existing comment:
Andrew Johnson
It was surely not the artist's intention to depict President Andrew Johnson standing symbolically with his back turned toward the Capitol building, where Radical Republicans in Congress were vehemently at odds with the president's agenda in the South. Politically, Johnson was a Jacksonian Democrat, who had opposed secession but nonetheless believed strongly in the doctrine of states' rights. His policy of Reconstruction for the formerly seceded states involved bringing them back into the Union expeditiously and allowing former Confederate leaders to hold public office. As a consequence, former Confederate leaders began restricting the rights of former slaves and blacks in general.
Edward Valois, 1865 |