Black Codes in the Former Confederate States

Encouraged by President Johnson's evident intention to return to them the management of their own affairs, Southern legislators, elected by white voters, passed what came to be called Black Codes. Their very evident purpose was to reduce free blacks to a new kind of legal servitude distinguished by all the disadvantages of slavery and none of its advantages--a state, many argued, that was worse than slavery itself. That the Black Codes were not the result …

…do you go on demanding exaction after exaction? You are actually trying to cut the heads of the Southern [men] arid thus leave the legs to manage political affairs. I must oppose such policy." Johnson's policy of restoring the rebellious states to the Union at once and virtually without conditions as regards the civil rights of blacks brought him into immediate conflict with the congressional leaders of his own party, most spectacularly Sumner and Stevens. . . .