While many legislatures were appalled, I’m not sure they should have been surprised at the newly assumed President’s attitude. Nor, in my humble opinion, should they have been surprised by the fact that he vetoed the bill that would become the Civil Rights Act of 1866. President Johnson was, after all, a North Carolina-born Democrat, a former Senator from Tennessee, and a former owner of at least 10 slaves. Ironically, he had “escaped” from what was technically a form of legal serfdom when he was a teen.