President Johnson Vetoes Reconstruction Legislation, Enabling Southern Resistance

President Andrew Johnson vetoed the Freedmen's Bureau extension bill in February 1866 and the Civil Rights Act in April, arguing that Black people were not entitled to federal protection and that Southern states should determine their own labor and race relations. Johnson's vetoes were overridden but his presidential pardons of Confederate leaders, restoration of their political rights, and return of confiscated land to former slaveholders effectively dismantled early Reconstruction policy. Johnson's active collusion with former Confederates was central to the failure to secure freedpeople's rights.