But the embittered feelings resulting from the murder of Lincoln and the rapid development of the struggle between President Johnson and Congress caused the radicals "to lump the old Union Democrats and Whigs together with the secessionists--and many were driven where they did not want to go, into temporary affiliation with the Democratic party." Thousands went very reluctantly; the old Whigs, indeed, were not firmly committed to the Democrats until radical reconstruction had actually begun.

Still other "loyalists" in the South were prepared to join the Northern radicals in advocating the disfranchisement of Confederates and in opposing the granting of suffrage to the Negroes.
The man upon whom fell the task of leading these opposing factions, radical and conservative, along a definite line of action looking to reunion had few qualifications for the task.

Johnson was ill-educated, narrow, and vindictive and was positive that those who did not agree with him were dishonest.

Himself a Southerner, picked up by the National Union Convention of 1864, as Thaddeus Stevens said, from "one of those damned rebel provinces," he loved the Union, worshiped the Constitution, and held to the strict construction views of the State Rights Democrats.
Rising from humble beginnings, he was animated by the most intense dislike of the "slavocracy," as he called the political aristocracy of the South.

Like many other American leaders he was proud of his humble origin, but unlike many others he never sloughed off his backwoods crudeness.