Politically, Johnson used the presence of the army and the Freedmen’s Bureau as both a carrot and a stick. Both he and Southerners recognized that without the army and the bureau the federal government lacked the capacity to enforce the laws Congress passed. If Southerners failed to accept his minimal conditions for readmission, then war powers, martial law, the army, and the Freedmen’s Bureau would remain. If the ex-Confederates cooperated with him, the army and the Freedmen’s Bureau would vanish from the South and the future political status of the freedmen would be left to the states.
