Post Civil War Chaos
By Don Valentine
The Freedmen’s Bureau was created in 1865 during the Lincoln administration, by an act of Congress called the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill. Britanica.com, documents that the Freedmen’s Bureau, formally known as the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, was meant to give aid to over 4 million former slaves. They provided aid for food, housing, oversight, education, health care, and employment contracts with landowners. This was a planned step to integrate ex slaves into society.
After the loss by the South, there were dramatic machinations behind the scenes of Lincoln’s administration. These malevolent deeds disrupted the path to fully incorporate Blacks into the Union. The full paradigm of the treacherous conspiracy to assassinate Lincoln is not discussed in most schools.
John Wilkes Booth’s full conspiracy included killing Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William Seward. Booth had convinced George Atzerodt, an acquaintance, to kill Johnson by setting a trap at the Kirkwood House hotel where the vice president lived. However, Atzerodt lost his nerve and didn’t attempt to kill the Vice President, even though he had a rented room above Johnson’s and a loaded gun was found in the room. General Ulysses Grant was another possible target, but only two attacks took place. Seward survived an assassination attempt and Lincoln died from Booth’s single gunshot.
That is how Vice President Johnson became the next POTUS. Universally he is ranked by historians as the top 3 WORST Presidents of all time ie. The Washington Post, PBS, White Housegov.com, CBS news, and the Smithsonian magazine.
Lincoln chose him as his running mate as a conciliatory gesture to the South to heal ill feelings. He was a former Senator from Tennessee, a Confederate state. Johnson was a truculent antagonist of the Freedmen’s Bureau act. He vetoed the Congress several times on this law. By 1868 Johnson’s Southern Congress supporters were able to render the Bureau ineffective. It was abolished altogether in 1872.
