Johnson turned not to the Army, or to the ex-slaves who had supported the Union, but to former Confederates. He offered pardons to all but about 1,500 Confederate leaders and asked the southern states to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, declare secession illegal, and essentially declare bankruptcy so that no one would ever again bankroll rebellion against the United States government. The states agreed—more or less—but then codified the racial violence that swept across the South in the summer of 1865. As employers cheated workers out of wages, gangs beat and raped African Americans into
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