Black Codes was a name given to laws passed by Southern governments instituted during the presidency of Andrew Johnson. These laws imposed severe restrictions on freed slaves, such as banning their right to vote, prohibiting them from serving on juries, limiting their right to testify against white men, carrying weapons in public places, and working in certain occupations. After the American Civil War, radical Republicans supported passage of the Civil Rights Bill, legislation designed to protect freed slaves from the Southern Black Codes (laws that imposed severe restrictions on freed slaves, such as barring their right to vote, banning them to serve on juries, limit their right to vote). testify against white men, carry weapons in public places, and work in certain occupations). In April 1866, President Andrew Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights Act. Johnson told Thomas C. Fletcher, the governor of Missouri, "This is a white man's country, and, by God, as long as I am president, it will be a white man's government." His views on racial equality were clearly set out in a letter to Benjamin B. French, the commissioner of public buildings: "Everyone would, and must admit, that the white race is superior to the black, and that while we should do our best to bring them to our present level, that, in so doing, we should, at the same time, raise our intellectual status so that the relative position of the two races will be the same" The Radical Republicans repassed the Civil Rights Act and they also succeeded in passing the Reconstruction Acts in 1867 and 1868. Despite these acts, white control over Southern state governments was gradually restored as organizations such as the Ku Kux Klan succeeded in scaring blacks from voting in elections. In a speech delivered on July 7, 1862, Charles Sumner attacked President Lincoln's decision to allow the Black Codes to continue. A government organized by Congress and appointed by the president must enforce laws and institutions, some of which are abominable to civilization. Take for example the Revised Code of North Carolina, which I have before me. "Any free person, who shall teach, or attempt to teach, a slave to read or write, excluding the use of ciphers, or shall give or sell to such slave any book or pamphlet, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, if a con ... middle of paper ... statements in various ways. What the future might reveal, how intelligent they might become, with what eyes they might look at the interests of the state in which they might reside, I cannot say more than you can .(5) Thaddeus Stevens, wrote his epitaph which appeared on his tombstone in an African American cemetery statutory rules, I chose this that I might illustrate in my death the principles I have upheld through a long life, the equality of man before the Creator.(6) JL Alcorn, letter to Elihu Washburne (June 29, 1868) It is possible that the peoples of the North have made the negro free, but that he be returned, a slave to society, to bear in that slavery the vengeful resentments which the satraps of Davis now harbor towards the peoples of the North? A thousand times better for the negro that the government should return him to the custody of the original owner, where he would have a master who cares for his welfare, than that his neck should be placed under the heel of a society vengeful towards him because he is free.