Southern Reconstruction During The Civil War

The Reconstruction plan changed politics drastically in the South. Republican governments gained power in each southern state. The southern states believed that they fell under the (http://www.westga.edu/~hgoodson/Reconstruction.htm) reconstruction just as long as the Republican government held power in there state. There were multiple of opinions on how the Reconstruction should be achieved.

487 – 496): Reconstruction in Wartime (pp. 487 – 488) 2. List and explain the major components of Lincoln’s Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction Plan, otherwise known as the “10% Plan”. Before Lincoln was assasinated, he had been developing a Reconstruction Plan that favored forgiviness over punishment. His Ten Percent Plan stated that if 10% of the voting population in 1860 of a Southern sate pledges loyalty to the nation, then the state would be able to join the Union. This plan was considered to being very lenient.

Lincoln wanted to help the South rejoin the Union. His primary concern was what was best for the Union. The South needed to rejoin the Union on his terms. Johnson had once talked tough against southern farmers, he allied himself with ex-Confederate leaders, and he forgave them when they appealed for pardons. This delighted southerners, of course,

Some people might have thought differently about the 10% plan. Like The Radical Republicans, “Many leading Republicans in Congress feared that Lincoln’s plan for Reconstruction was not harsh enough, believing that the South needed to be punished for causing the war. These Radical Republicans hoped to control the Reconstruction process, transform southern society, disband the planter aristocracy, redistribute land, develop industry, and guarantee civil liberties for former slaves. Although the Radical Republicans were the minority party in Congress, they managed to sway many moderates in the postwar years and came to dominate Congress in later

Reconstruction Era: Congressional Reconstruction During the Reconstruction Era President Abraham Lincoln introduced the “10 percent plan”. Abraham Lincoln’s plan included allowing Confederate states to rejoin the union once 10 percent of the people swore an oath of loyalty. His plan also included for states to formalize the 13th Amendment to eradicate slavery. Radical Republicans led by Thaddeus Stevens thought that the Reconstruction Plan that was put forth by Abraham Lincolns was too lenient on the Confederate States.

David Blight, Lincoln's basic approach to Reconstruction was to be threefold. His plan was “to make Reconstruction as fast as possible, as lenient as possible, and as much as possible under presidential authority” (Blight, 2008). In 1863, he had come up with the plan to pardon all southerners who took an oath to support the Union and any state with ten percent of its voters would be allowed to form a new state government and constitution. Reconstruction debates ensued between President Lincoln and Congress in 1864, as they sought to determine if Reconstruction should be a Congressional or Presidential policy.

Reconstruction (1865 to 1877) was the time period that followed the American revolution in which did Northern states attempted to accommodate for the sudden changes in the United States government and integrate Southern states back into the north seamlessly. One of the major goals of reconstruction was to integrate the newly freed African Americans into society without relapsing and returning back to a state of slavery again. President Abraham Lincoln introduced the Ten Percent Plan in 1863 which would require 10 percent of the voters in the state to agree to be integrated back into the Union, which would create a slow and easy process for the Confederacy to join the Union once again. Post the war in 1865, Lincoln also passed the Freedmen’s

Differences of Opinions between President Andrew Johnson, the so called Radical Republicans, and the Southern State’s resentment provided the country with a difficult challenge for Reconstruction after the Civil War. Without the leadership of Abraham Lincoln, who believed in pardoning the South, bringing the Confederates states back into the Union became a rocky and short-lived process. Many Historians call the reconstruction of the South a failure. Lincoln’s plan for reuniting the Union consisted of factors that ensured a full pardon for war crimes and a restoration of property with the exception of slaves for members of the individual Southern States as long as ten percent of the population of each state took an oath of loyalty to the Constitution

The Congress Republicans tended to fall into two categories; moderate and radical. The moderates-who made up the majority- wanted the south to return to the Union as quickly as possible, but on the terms of Congress. The radical Republicans, however, wanted to break the recalcitrant states down and rebuild them from the ground up, forcing them to uproot their sociopolitical structure before they could return to the US. While both groups approached the issues quite differently, what they both could agree on was that the rights of the emancipated slaves needed to be protected, and that former Confederates did not belong with them in Congress. When the Republicans had realized they would eventually have to include delegates from southern states (which would have a significant amount of clout, now that former slaves were being properly counted as part of the population, meaning the South would have more representatives), they tried to pass as much legislature as they could to limit Southern power.

The conditions of the south after the Civil War were devastating. Sherman burned a path from Mississippi to Georgia's coast. Military Governors seized vegetable farm lands and estates that were once beautiful. They did not have representation in congress until 1885. Before then they improvised for many years after the war.

He had proposed his blueprint for Reconstruction, which included his Ten Percent Plan in 1863. It stated that a southern state could be readmitted into the Union once ten percent of its voters swore an oath of allegiance to the Union. The South needed to be physically reintegrated back into the Union. So, the Ten Percent Plan was a notion of physical reconstruction of the South. And just as it was being debated in Congress, President Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth in 1865.

He favored a moderate policy that would conjoin the South with the Union without any punishment for treason. Many resisted Lincoln’s plan, saying it was not harsh enough while others did not know if Lincoln was being too lenient. The Radical Republicans and moderate Republicans were caught in a conflict. One important event of the Reconstruction Period was the Wade-Davis Bill. This was formed by the Radical Republicans and moderate Republicans.

In a stroke of genius, it allowed for a small minority of Northern sympathizers to take over a Southern state and create a government. The Ten Percent plan also pardoned all Southern citizens and most officials, creating a feeling of leniency among those in the South. In this way, Lincoln managed to completely take over states with small amounts of supporters within them, while at the same time appearing amicable to the South. He successfully accomplished his goals and started the process of reconstruction while avoiding a public outcry.

When the Confederacy did not yield, Lincoln put the final Emancipation Proclamation into effect. After it was put in effect with the civil war was concluded, Lincoln could not have been prouder of enacting the order. “Heralded as the savior of the Union, President Lincoln actually considered the Emancipation Proclamation to be the most important aspect of his legacy. “I never, in my life, felt more certain that I was doing right, than I do in signing this paper,” he declared. “If my name ever goes into history it will be for this act, and my

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