In Class on Tuesday we mainly went over the Presidency of Andrew Johnson and the attempted impeachment of him. While Congress was on its break President Johnson over the summer took care of the southern problem. That problem was letting the South back into the Union and letting them participate in Congress. Over the summer without letting any of the northern congressional members know, Andrew Johnson told all the former southern congress members just to come on back, many of these people were the ones who helped run the Confederacy, so there is going to problems with this but Johnson just wanted to put the whole event in the past and act like nothing happened.
I personally feel like Andrew Johnson letting them back in without any consequences is a big issue, its basically a slap in the face to the Northern political leaders and the Union army. Although I feel as if Johnson had good intentions but didn't think about the backlash that would occur from it. He just wanted to put the Civil War behind him and everyone else and hope things would go back to normal in an instant. I agree on the decision to bring the South back into Congress because a divided America would be weaker than a united America and one of the main goals of the Civil War was the preservation of the Union.
President Johnson was right to bring the South back into Congress in my opinion but he shouldn't have brought back the same ones that helped run the Confederacy, there should have been special elections held for all of those seats and the public should have been made aware of what was going on, he upset a lot of people for doing what he did and they were right to get upset. Bringing back those southern politicians gave the statement that the Civil War was fought and won for nothing and that 800,000 Americans fought and died just so America could go back to pre Civil War times. Elections would've been the right thing to do and even when they were elected they should have had to earn back there trust to have a voice in Congress. Instead of saying he come on back, he should have had them prove they could come back or they would be replaced.
President Johnson was impeached for many different things, he was impeached because people were pissed off and they wanted him gone, which is understandable but he didn't do anything that overstepped his bounds or things that were unconstitutional. I learned that he wasn't impeached and that was really surprising to me because of how he just brought the South back in and the constant veto of laws that Congress was trying to pass. Him not getting impeached says that people will still do the right thing and not just get rid of him because they're upset with what he's done, I think if he would have got impeached for this, then a whole bunch of Presidents after him would've gotten impeached as well.
