The timing of Lincoln’s murder gave Johnson an extraordinary amount of power to stop the spread of the Union’s democratic vision. Congress had adjourned for the summer on the morning of Lincoln’s second inaugural address, and it was not scheduled to reconvene until early December 1865. The exhausted congressmen had hurried to their far-flung homes. Just a month later, as news spread of Lincoln’s death, they rushed back to Washington, fully expecting that Johnson would call them into emergency session, just as Lincoln had in 1861. But Johnson had no intention of sharing power with Republicans
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