This week I was going to bring Abraham Lincoln 's plan for reconstruction to the table. It is said that Lincoln started to plan for reconstruction post war. The plan was to address three key areas for concern. First the proclamation allowed full pardon and restoration of any property to anyone who was considered a rebellion or a member of the confederate army with exception of the highest officials and leaders (which is interesting). It also allowed for a state government to be formed once ten percent of the population took an oath of allegiance to the United States, and it encouraged the southern states to deal with slaves in such a way that it would not compromise their freedom.
Both Lincoln and Johnson had different ways to approach Reconstruction. Both did support the Ten Percent Plan. This plan allowed each southern state that were part of the rebellion to return to the Union. Just as long as 10% of their voters would take a loyalty oath and they approve the Thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery. Johnson wasn’t as moral as Lincoln didn’t have the same political judgement.
Test #2 Presidential and Congressional Reconstruction Evan Meekins, the author of The Black Banner describes the period of Reconstruction as, “War was easy. The hard part was cleaning up afterward.” Reconstructing a divided and severed Union was a difficult and insurmountable task, but it had to be done. It fixed the issue of slavery by freeing the slaves and had rejoined the ex- Confederate states into the Union once again. Reconstruction was semi-effective in the state of Texas.
Even though there were some groups who wanted compromises and solutions, they never appeared and there were not enough groups to bring together the big gap between the north and south. There may have been different options that people could have taken but there were irreparable causes that made it
Lincoln thought that the beginning of reconstruction would help speed the war effort and bring it to a close sooner. Wade and Davis would have preferred to delay and wait for the war to end and for the South to be completely beaten with pre-secession institutions gone and needing to be rebuilt. There were a number of concepts that both Lincoln’s 10 percent plan and the Wade-Davis bill had in common. In 1863, with Union victory apparently on the horizon Lincoln “announces a policy for the reconstruction of recanting Confederates”, “Whereas it is now desired by some persons heretofore engaged in said rebellion to resume their
Each side was unwilling to fully bend to the other. The North’s main focus was to stop slavery from spreading, and some of the more radical Northerners
President Abraham Lincoln was poised to have a solution, but he was assassinated before he could ever deliver. His Vice President, Andrew Johnson, became the new president and took a knife to the delicate procedure of southern reintegration. While he banned former Confederate officers and government officials from ever taking part in U.S. government, he turned around and pardoned them back into the country almost instantly. Congress was rightfully angry with the President’s betrayal of the Reconstruction Movement, crippling it before it even had a chance to begin. For the next few years, Congress was fighting against their own president to get reconstructive efforts passed, fighting veto after veto.
The country was in shambles and needed a plan to heal, so under Abraham Lincoln he began to do just that. He gave the hope of peace and prosperity to the entire nation, under which it would slowly rebuild. Though the Radical Republicans had to take over this project it clearly became a bright spot in American history for the changes made to help freedmen. Throughout the country the Lincoln’s idea of reconstruction had been signal of hope for many of its people, but because of his assassination the hope steadily diminished.
The north depended on trade and also had the beginnings of a manufacturing industry while the south relied heavily on the growing of cotton and farming to make their money. This economically divided country made it really hard for them to unite because they were so
The most powerful people in the south, the KKK were the only ones that could have helped with the reconstruction of the south were not helping matters, that is why there was not and big developments. The south only wanted white people in power because they thought that the freedman were not equal and unfit to be part of any governments. The south wouldn’t even allow the freedmen to attend and public events. In conclusion even though the North had taken the soldiers out of the south and had given up on the freemen, the south has had a lot more problems reconstructing and making the freedman equal.
They were divided because they do not share the same ideas, the states in the north was not agree with the slavery and the states in the south, states that base their economy in primary activities like agriculture were agree on have slaves and they do not want to allowed to change that situations, but they were agree in one thing they know that they have to stay together in order to be a successful nation and contain the European powers they need to find a way to construct an empire even if they did not think the
The cause of most political dispute around 1820-1860 was mostly about slavery. There has been division between the North and the South, though compromise had usually serve in calming the disagreement. However, nearing 1860, political compromise appeared useless. Comprises simply postponed addressing the issue, and led to even more greater issues than needed,compromise wasn’t working politically, socially,and economically for our nation.
The Presidential Reconstruction and Congressional Reconstruction plans were frequently different from one another. As I continue, I will state in my opinion the most significant differences between the two plans. To begin, Lincoln and Johnson’s plans were far too lenient with the Confederate states. The Presidential Reconstruction plan under Johnson allowed former Confederate states to be part of the Union, when they accepted the 13th amendment and swore to the Union. While, the Congressional Reconstruction plan was to allow those states to rejoin the Union if and only when they accepted the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments.
Abraham Lincoln’s vs Andrew Johnson’s Reconstruction Plan Lincoln shared the uncommon belief that the confederate states could still be part of the union and that the cause of the rebellion was only a few within the states which lead him to begin the reconstruction in December of 1863. This resulted in plans with lenient guidelines and although they were challenged by Wade-Davis Bill, Lincoln still rejected his ideas and kept his policies in place. Lincoln also allowed land to be given the newly freed slave or homeless white by distributing the land that had been confiscated from former land owners however this fell through once Johnson took office. After Lincoln’s death when Johnson was elected many things started to turn away from giving blacks equal rights and resulted in many things such a black codes which kept newly freed slaves from having the same rights as whites. When Lincoln first acted after the civil war, he offered policies that would allow the confederate slaves to become part of the union again and would allow a pardon for those states.
However, these differences show that the North and South were actually two distinct countries held together by one constitution. The North felt that decisions regarding slavery and its legality were entrenched in the central government while the South felt that such decision belonged to the individual states. In the times preceding the war, both sides could not reach a compromise. Bonner mentions, “Because secession and war were permitted to come, warned Russel, "We are not entitled to lay the flattering unction to our souls that the Civil War was an inevitable conflict (Bonner, 195).” Hence, these differences could only be addressed through war.
