African Americans During Reconstruction

The question of black representation among the government was addressed immediately. However the issue was under jurisdiction of President Andrew Johnson, who was a Southerner and also thought that African Americans shouldn't have a role in Reconstruction, American Historian, Robert Cruden said of Johnson, "His Jacksonian philosophy had perhaps an even greater flaw in view of the problems he confronted: it had some place for the Negro as a free man, but it had none for him as an equal"1. During the Presidential Reconstruction, 1865-1867, Johnson appointed provisional governors and ordered them to call state conventions in order to establish new, all white, governments in the South. These new all white governments looked similar to the confederate governments they had replaced, In an essay by Steven Hahn he said of black representation in the south, "Outside of South Carolina, they show, blacks never dominated either the executive, legislative, or judiciary always remained under white control"2 . Johnson's third annual message to congress in December, 1867 depicted his prejudice, he said of the African Americans that they had, "shown less capacity for government than any other race of people. No independent government of any form has ever been successful in their hands. On the contrary, wherever they have been left to their own devices, they have shown a constant tendency to relapse into barbarism"3. Even though during Reconstruction there were many black people holding both federal and state offices during reconstruction.