Until Justice Be Done: America's First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction

by Kate Masur

Theories varied as to the status of those states in relation to the federal government, but most northerners agreed that federal officials (perhaps the president, perhaps Congress) were entitled to dictate terms because the Confederacy had been defeated in war. Freedmen’s Bureau officials pushed state governments to repeal racist laws and, in particular, to accord African Americans the equal right to testify in court. At times, Johnson himself got involved, as when he informed the Mississippi governor that he would withdraw the army only when the state adopted measures protecting “all freedmen, or freemen in persons and property, without regard to Color.” Even as Johnson threatened to continue the military occupation, however, he instructed the army to demobilize rapidly. And as growing numbers of US soldiers were discharged in the second half of 1865, white southerners stepped up their violent attacks on freedpeople and white Unionists, increasingly confident that they would be permitted to define the post-slavery order for themselves.12