On April 14, 1865 at ten thirty in the evening, John Wilkes Booth fired a bullet into the back of President Lincoln’s head. “Father Abraham” died at approximately seven-thirty the following morning at the Pederson House across the street from Ford’s Theater. On April 16 Andrew Johnson took the oath of office to become the 17th President of the United States. Like Lincoln, Johnson came from poverty and rose to political prominence through self-reliance, long hours of work, and determination. The similarities end there. Johnson was a “lonely, stubborn man” who was “unable to compromise.”<ref>Eric Foner, ''Give Me Liberty: An American History'' (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2009), 534.</ref>These traits were ideologically inverse to those of Lincoln in that President Lincoln remained patient in his actions and realized that the only successful method with which to reincorporate the states to their “proper practical relation with the Union,” was that of compromise.<ref>''Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln.''</ref>In contrast to Lincoln, Johnson deemed the secessionist states and their leaders to be traitors and sought much harsher treatment and conditions of reinstatement than those of Lincoln.
== Andrew Johnson's Reconstruction Violence against Freedman and Republicans==
[[File:andrewjohnson.jpg|thumbnail|250px|Andrew Johnson, 17th President of the United States]]
Andrew Johnson was of the opinion that the South needed to feel suffering for its act of rebellion. This line of reasoning was of no good to any party involved in reconstruction and perpetuated a feeling a vengeance among all. The violence in America during this period of history was astounding. According to statistics given at the Southern States Convention in 1871, approximately 1600 murders had taken place in Georgia alone since Reconstruction began. In total, the number of murders across the entire South was 20,000; the victims being free blacks and their white allies.<ref>Herbert Shapiro, “Afro-American Responses to Race Violence During Reconstruction”, ''Science and Society'' 36, no.2 (summer, 1972): 158, http://www.jstor.org/pss/40401634</ref> One act of mass violence took place in Louisiana in July 1866. Radical Republicans of that state recalled their delegates to meet at the statehouse with the goal of enfranchising black men. The delegates and their supporters were attacked by a group of white men, many of whom were wearing their Confederate uniforms. Federal troops were brought in to quell the violence but not before 146 people were wounded and 37 killed, 34 of which were black and the other three were white radicals.<ref>Louisiana State Museum, “Riot of 1866," http://www.lsm.crt.state.la.us/cabildo/cab11.htm</ref>It was clear that the new state governments enabled by President Johnson were either unwilling or incapable of preventing violence against blacks and their supporters. In 1865 and 1866, the courts in Texas indicted 500 white men for the murder of black citizens; there were zero convictions.<ref>Eric Foner, ''A Short History of Reconstruction, 1863-1877'' (New York: Harper&Row, 1990), 85.</ref>
== Black Codes and the Freedmen's Bureau ==
