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Shortly after President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, Andrew Johnson quickly tried to take control of a country filled with turmoil. In the PBS Documentary, The Civil War and Reconstruction2 Johnson was far from the leader that the United States needed during this time of change as his political views and beliefs in civil rights were slanted towards the South and its beliefs. Eleven states were now left with an unparalleled void in its economy. These states had to find new ways to make money because slavery was the glue holding its agricultural industry together. .
Cotton fields were empty and the industry was facing extinction. Southern states facing poverty and fear of their new neighbors began negotiating with black workers to settle how much should be paid in order to place them back onto the cotton fields. According to PBS, The Civil War and Reconstruction, in the year of 1865, more than 2,000 black freed men and women were murdered during the negotiation process. Not only were there murders, but also southern states tried to establish laws prohibiting black freedmen from carrying weapons and gave plantation owners the right to take black children away from their poor families to work in the field. The southerners had tried to restore their white supremacy with these new laws that even allowed auctioning off black men. .
Northerners became outraged at these new laws and pleaded with Andrew Johnson to intervene, but to no avail. Worried that the Civil War would have been in vain with this sudden change in Southern politics and the lack of government intervention, Congress convened to reestablish laws and protect the civil liberties of black men and women that were fought for during the Civil War. During this Congressional Convention, the 14th Amendment was proposed and ultimately passed making black freed men full citizens of the United States. According to Encyclopedia Britannica the 14th Amendment stated, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.