by Simon Black
Sovereign Man
By February 1868, President Andrew Johnson had been at odds with Congress for years.
Johnson had been Vice President for barely a month when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1864, and his battles with Congress started from practically Day 1.
Johnson shared Lincoln’s view that the Confederacy should be swiftly and gently reintegrated back into the Union after the Civil War; neither wanted to penalize the South.
But at the time, Congress was filling up with politicians known as “Radical Republicans” who were anything BUT moderate.