office. Enough Confederates signed these oaths to enable the immediate creation of new governments. Johnson required that the new states ratify the 13th Amendment freeing the slaves. It also abolished slavery in their own constitutions, discarded debts incurred while in rebellion, and declared secession null and void. By the end of 1865 all of the secessionist states but Texas had rejoined the Union.
             Radical Republicans in Congress thought they should control Reconstruction and wished to punish the South for causing the Civil War. Some of these Republicans wished to create a Southern society where blacks and whites were equal. These Republicans opposed the Southern "Black Codes." Black Codes were harsh local and state laws passed to control blacks in the South after the Civil War. Mississippi and South Carolina passed the first and toughest measures late in 1865, and other southern states soon followed. Their provisions varied from state to state, but typically they stipulated that freed people could rent land only in rural areas -
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