Simply put, Lincoln believed that the Confederacy should be peacefully brought back into the Union. Lincoln'ssuccessor, Andrew Johnson, believed the exact opposite. Johnson believed that the South should be punished for what they did and, as a result, dealt much more harshly with the South then Lincoln intended. It then, of course, did not help matters that the man who shot Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth, was a famous Southern actor. Someone that the South idolized became the enemy of a nation. Johnson, who, as I said, wanted to punish the South. Therefore, he used Booth as an excuse to go after the former Confederacy with the full force of his administration.
