In 1865 President Andrew Johnson implemented a plan of Reconstruction that gave the white South a free hand in regulating the transition from slavery to freedom and offered no role to blacks in the politics of the South. The conduct of the governments he established turned many Northerners against the president's policies.
Laws were needed to justify the need for order in the rising complexity of the civilization so as more laws were written more were enforced and more were needed to justify that enforcement
