Andrew Johnson was the seventeenth president of the US and followed Lincoln after his assassination. He was a Democrat and as vice president offered a good bridge to the South as the Civil War was ending but as president he was not trusted by the Republicans.
Andrew Johnson pardoned Confederate leaders, allowing them to keep their land and sometimes positions in society. He provided an easy path back into the Union and did not protect blacks from the growing power of groups like the Ku Klux Klan. Johnson vetoed a civil rights act that would have prevented segregation and violence against former slaves. His policies would convince Republicans that they would have to take Reconstruction over in Congress.
