With the conclusion of the Civil War after the battle of Appomattox Court house, a new era had dawned. Soon after, President Lincoln was gunned down and assassinated in Ford's Theatre, by a Southern supporter and actor, John Wilkes Booth. Chaos quickly spread and the nation's stability was still unsteady. Nonetheless, Reconstruction was a failure because many political differences still existed, the South was stronger politically more than ever, and the Southern economy was destroyed, and freed slaves still suffered drastically. .
Many political differences still existed. It was known that the Democratic Vice President, Andrew Johnson, would become president since President Lincoln had died. At this point, all Democratic politicians were banned from the Capitol until December of 1865. Johnson continuously vetoed bills that favored the North. However, the Republicans dominated Congress and overrode all of his vetoes, including bills for the Freedmen's Bureau and the Fourteenth Amendment. The South politically disagreed and many of the southern states spurned the amendment. Even the Republicans had their differences between radicals and the more moderate Republicans. The radicals wanted to bring a drastic social and economic transformation in the South, while moderates preferred mainly protecting citizen's rights. However, if the Radicals had gotten their way most of the time, the South would have been less corrupt, more orderly, while limiting more discriminations against freed blacks. .
When the South was able to be in Congress again, they were stronger than ever. Before Reconstruction, slaves were counted as three-fifths of a person. Now that they were free, they counted as a whole person and since most of them still lived in the South, those states were more heavily populated. As a result, their electoral vote would increase along with an advantage to a Democratic presidential candidate.
