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President Johnson, who took office in April 1865, took a lenient approach and saw the achievement of the main war goals as realized in 1865, when each ex-rebel state repudiated secession and ratified the Thirteenth Amendment. Radical Republicans demanded proof that Confederate nationalism was dead and that the slaves were truly free. They overrode Johnson's vetoes of civil rights legislation, and the House impeached him, although the Senate did not convict him. In 1868 and 1872, the Republican candidate Grant won the presidency. In 1872, the "Liberal Republicans" argued that the war goals had been achieved and Reconstruction should end. They chose Horace Greeley to head a presidential ticket in 1872 but were decisively defeated. In 1874, Democrats, primarily Southern, took control of Congress and opposed further reconstruction. The Compromise of 1877 closed with a national consensus, except on the part of former slaves, that the war had finally ended. With the withdrawal of federal troops, however, white men retook control of every Southern legislature, and the Jim Crow era of disenfranchisement and legal segregation was ushered in.
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