Quote:He effectively returned freed slaves to a life of servitude and institutionalized oppression. Johnson may have held true to your view of the Constitution, but he sought to exploit its inherent weaknesses to subjugate human beings. He was a horrible president and person.

Because he opposed reconstruction at the federal level? He rightfully argued it was once again a centralization of federal power that has no basis in the Constitution. We had just ended a war over it all men where free but radical republicans wanted to centralized power and destroy state sovereignty because he fought that he was a champion of state rights. Centralized power makes no man free but enslaves all men to foreign oppression.


He stood against slavery through out the war remained a southern unionist but after the war protected the rights of states to self govern. How that makes him a horrible person baffles me.

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