When Congress convened in December, 1865, its members held a wide
variety of opinions in regard to the best method of restoring the
confederate states to the Union. On one point, however, there was some
agreement--that Congress ought to withhold approval of executive
reconstruction until it could decide upon a program of its own. Led by
Thaddeus Stevens, the radical leader of the House, a joint congressional
committee of fifteen was appointed to report whether any of the southern
state governments were entitled to representation in Congress. For the
present, all of them, even the President's own state, were to be denied
representation. With Stevens as chairman of the House Committee on
Reconstruction and Johnson in the President's chair, a battle was
inevitable, in which quarter would be neither asked nor given.

Unhappily for themselves, the southern states played unwittingly into
the hands of Stevens and his radical colleagues. The outcome of the war
had placed upon the freedmen responsibilities which they could not be
expected to carry. To many of them emancipation meant merely cessation
from work. Vagabondage was common. Rumor was widespread that the
government was going to give each negro forty acres of land and a mule,
and the blacks loafed about, awaiting the division. The strict
regulations which had surrounded the former slave were discarded and it
was necessary to accustom him to a new regime. "The race was free, but
without status, without leaders, without property, and without
education." Fully alive to the dangers of giving unrestricted freedom
to so large a body of ignorant negroes, the southern whites passed the
"black codes," which placed numerous limitations on the civil liberty
of "persons of color." In some cases they were forbidden to carry arms,
to act as witnesses in court except in cases involving their own race,
and to serve on juries or in the militia. Vagrancy laws enabled the