“I hope and pray that our Government will not listen to the ex-parte statements of the old rulers of these States, many of whom are still traitors at heart, and even now are seeking to grasp again the political power under the old flag,” Saxton added. “It will be bad for the Freedmen if these men again get into power.”
It wasn’t long before Saxton’s fears became a reality. In April 1865, just a month after creating the Freedmen’s Bureau, Lincoln was assassinated by actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, was an avowed white supremacist who moved quickly to pardon many former Confederates and return their land.
“[Johnson] used executive power very, very skillfully to undermine transfer of land to Black people, and to really hamstring the Freedmen’s Bureau,” said Donald Nieman, a history professor at Binghamton University. He added that Johnson acted out of personal prejudice toward the freedmen, but also political expediency. “By restoring land and by giving pardons to the former landowners in the South, he thought he could make that group of people beholden to him politically.”
That’s one of the rare bad things about the US that I did learn in school. I’m sure it’s because my ninth grade history teacher had a PhD and many years of being recognized as the best teacher in the district.
Teachers matter!
I learned it in catholic grade school with teachers that were young women willing to take the low pay.
I mean, they definitely teach it in history, so idk
There is no single “what they teach in history”, what people are taught varies massively state by state and even district by district, especially for some who graduated 40+ years ago.
