When an angered Grant threatened to resign, President Johnson backed down, and on June 20, Johnson's Attorney General James Speed ordered the United States Attorney General in Norfolk, Virginia to drop treason proceedings against Lee, saving Lee from punishment and prosecution.[287]

Tour of the South
Further information: Reconstruction era
President Johnson's Reconstruction policy included a speedy return of the former Confederates to Congress, reinstating whites to office in the South, and relegating blacks to second-class citizenship.[288] On November 27, 1865, General Grant left Washington, sent by Johnson on a fact-finding mission to the South, to counter a pending less favorable report by Senator Carl Schurz.[289][x] Grant recommended continuation of the Freedmen's Bureau, which Johnson opposed, but advised against using black troops, which he believed encouraged an alternative to farm labor.[291] Grant did not believe the people of the South were ready for self-rule, and that both whites and blacks in the South required protection by the federal government. Concerned that the war led to diminished respect for civil authorities, Grant continued using the Army to maintain order.[292] Grant's report on the South, which he later recanted, sympathized with Johnson's conservative Reconstruction policies.