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II / Self-Reconstruction Begins: The Failure of Strait-Sect Unionism IN N THE weeks after Abraham Lincoln's assassination, white southerners waited for Andrew Johnson's first substantive policy announcements with understandable uncertainty and uneasiness. To hear VicePresident Johnson speak on the subject of secession, Carl Schurz later recalled, "one would have thought that if this man ever came into power, the face of the country would soon bristle with gibbets and foreign lands swarm with fugitives from the avengingsword ofthe Republic." Southerners of more modest means could take heart from the fact that he had directed his darkest threats against the "great planters" who had lorded it over their poor neighbors and sneered at Negro equality even though "mulatto children" surrounded their homes, "the product of concubinage, compared to which, polygamy is a virtue." An old Tennessee rival claimed that no emotion—fear, love, disgust, or jealousy—matched the hatred Johnson had felt for the southern "aristocrat." If "Johnson were a snake," concluded Isham Harris, "he would lie in the grass to bite the heels of rich men's children." Throughout his long political career, he had hatedgentlemen by instinct. As he said on April 3, he would be lenientwith the poor and with honestly deluded southern soldiers, but as for the rich and influential secessionists, he declared, "I would arrest them—I would try them— I would convict them and I would hang them." However consoling this class bias might be for the common southerners, it was hardly reassuring to men of property.1 i. Frank Moore (ed.)> Speeches of Andrew Johnson, President of the United Stales. With a Biographical Introduction (Boston, 1865), xxxv; Clifton Hall, Andrew Johnson, Military Governor of Tennessee (Princeton, 1916), a», 174, aai; John M. Palmer, Personal Recollections of 24 Self-Reconstruction Begins / 25 The president's May 29 Proclamation of Amnesty and Pardon—his first major statement on postwar policy—appeared to be a chilling reflection of his mistrust of wealthy southerners. Although the majority of southerners who supported the Confederacy were to receivea pardon as soon as they had taken the oath of allegiance to the United States and promised to obey the Emancipation Proclamation, there were fourteen categories ofexceptions . The largest excluded those former rebels with twenty thousand dollars1 worth of property from the generous provisionsof Johnson's amnesty policy, barred them from public life, and threw them into a legal limbo in which they remained subject to all the penalties of treason. While northern Republicans tended to focus upon the effect of these exemptions upon the suffrage, unpardoned southerners were initially far more concerned about their property holdings. Altogether fifteen thousand southerners filed pardon applications, more than half of them threatened by the "twenty thousand dollars" clause. Even if one took the optimistic position that the president would avoid extensive treason trials, excepted southerners were barred from any licensed profession such as the law and their property remained subject to confiscation.2 Even as he threatened with one clause, however, the president offered clemency with another. Pardons would be "liberally extended" on an individual basis, he declared, "consistent with the facts ofthe case and with the peace and dignity of the United States." And to make his point even clearer, he met with delegations of apprehensive southerners during the months of June and July to assure them that, his wartimethreats notwithstanding , his postwar policy included neither gibbets nor banishment.3 The president's conservative approach to Reconstruction was further reflected in the character and political outlook of the seven men he selected during June and early July as provisional governors forthe two Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas. Although the significance of these appointments was unclear in the summer of 1865 they were to prove critical in establishing the limits of Andrew Johnson's plans to "reconstruct" the South. The president would intervenein southern politics on several occasions in 1865 and 1866, but he always preferred that white southerners initiate policies within the guidelines he had outlined. John M. Palmer: The Story of an Earnest Life (Cincinnati, 1901), 137; Carl Schurz, The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (3 vols.; Garden City,N.Y., 1913), HI, 95; Life, Speeches, andServices of Andrew Johnson, Seventeenth President of the United States (Philadelphia, 1865), 118-90. a. James D. Richardson (comp.), A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents , 1^89-1897(11 vols.; Washington, D.C., 1896-99), VI, 913-18; Jonathan T. Dorris, "Pardon Seekers and Brokers: A Sequel to...

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