Explanation: The most prominent national political party at the time was the Republican Party, which had internal divisions when it came to discussing National Reconstruction. Conservatives advocated limited and conciliatory federal action in the southern states, guaranteeing the political rights of the units that established a government that was committed to the principles of the Union. The freedmen, in the eyes of the conservatives, were not to be guaranteed much more than freedom itself. Following the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865, the United States government fell to Southern Democrat Andrew Johnson, one of the proponents of this Reconstruction project that revealed a fragile commitment to black civil rights.
