Presidential Reconstruction and Congressional Reconstruction have some differences and some similarities. Reconstruction was a huge thing at this time in America. Abraham Lincoln was a huge part of reconstruction and when he was assassinated, Andrew Johnson took over his role of President and of reconstructing the south. Abraham Lincoln wanted to fix the intersectional hatred that was caused from the civil war. On December 8, 1863 Lincoln set a general policy that by taking an oath southerners could reinstate themselves as US citizens. Abraham Lincoln was working hard to bring southern states back into the Union. One way he tried was with the Ten Percent Plan. In this Ten Percent Plan, 10% of people voting in a state had to take a loyalty oath. If this happened then that state could setup a new state government. Under this Ten Percent Plan, governments had to realize that they had to Republican and realize that slaves would be free and provide for black education. Radical Republicans in Congress disliked the Ten Percent Plan. In July 1864, they passed the Wade-Davis Bill, which was a bill stating that the majority of the voters in the south had to take a loyalty oath, not just 10% of the state. Lincoln disagreed and got rid of this bill with a pocket veto. In April of 1865 President Lincoln was assassinated. His running mate, Andrew Johnson took over presidency. Most people thought that he would punish the south, but soon everyone realized that was not true. He became more focused on punishing the southern elite and not the whole south. Radical Republicans hated him and they decided to take matters into their own hands. Even though slavery had been abolished, the southern states enact... ... middle of paper ... ... injunction to stop the strike action because of mail not being able to be delivered. On the 4th of July troops arrived and violence broke out, crowds fought with 14,000 Federal Troops, police and militiamen. It spread to several states and 34 lives were lost. The combined forces forced the strike to end on July 8. With all of these strikes taking place, many companies were disturbed. Americans wanted to be treated fairly. By forming unions and standing their ground against their employers, employees were able to go on strike and prove a point. Some strikes turned very bad with deaths and injuries. Having unions were good in some views and bad in others. Overall the unions were there to benefit employees all over America. Works Cited Carnes, Mark C., and John A. Garraty. American Destiny: Narrative of a Nation. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2008. Print.
They concentrated on higher wages, shorter hours, and personal issues of workers. The American Federation of Labor’s main weapon was walkouts and boycotts to get industries to succeed to better conditions and higher wages. By the early 1900’s, its membership was up to ½ million workers. Through the years since The Great Depression, labor unions were responsible for several benefits for employees. Workers have safer conditions, higher paying jobs to choose from, and better benefits negotiated for them by their collective bargaining unit.
The Pullman Strike of 1894 was the first national strike in American history and it came about during a period of unrest with labor unions and controversy regarding the role of government in business.5 The strike officially started when employees organized and went to their supervisors to ask for a lowered rent and were refused.5 The strike had many different causes. For example, workers wanted higher wages and fewer working hours, but the companies would not give it to them; and the workers wanted better, more affordable living quarters, but the companies would not offer that to them either. These different causes created an interesting and controversial end to the Pullman strike. Because of this, questions were raised about the strike that are still important today. Was striking a proper means of getting what the workers wanted? Were there better means of petitioning their grievances? Was government intervention constitutional? All these questions were raised by the Pullman Strike.
Although Lincoln and Johnson both passed Reconstruction plans that helped reunite the north and the south, ultimately Congress was not satisfied and passed its own plan. Lincoln passed a rather forgiving Reconstruction plan because in his opinion, the Confederate states had never seceded from the Union. The Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction included a ten percent plan, which “ would recognize them as people of the states within which they acted, and aid them to gain in all respects full acknowledgement and enjoyment of statehood, even though the persons who thus acted were but a tenth part of the original voters of their states” (W...
Throughout the history of the United States of America the continuation of misfortunes for the workforce has aggravated people to their apex, eventually leading to the development of labor unions.
President Johnson tried to enforce Lincoln’s Ten Percent Plan. That as soon as ten percent of the population of any southern state took an oath of loyalty to the union and adopted a constitution that abolished slavery they would be readmitted to the union. The radical republicans in congress totally disagreed with Johnson. Many of the southern states in 1865 under presidential reconstruction adopted what was known as black codes. These codes restricted blacks from any participation in the rights of citizenship. Blacks were confined to an inferior position, they were not legally slaves anymore, but they had no rights of citizenship.
Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States during the beginning era of Reconstruction, had plans to free slaves and grant them freedoms like never before. In 1863, before the war had ended, Lincoln had issued a Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction for the areas of the South that the Union armies occupied. This proclamation was also called the 10 percent plan. It suggested that a state could reenter the Union when 10 percent of that state’s 1860 vote count had taken an oath of allegiance to the United States and pledge to abide by emancipation. Although this policy was put into place to help shorten the war, it also forced governments to further Lincoln’s emancipation policies and abolish slavery. Radical Republicans opposed this plan because they feared it was too lenient towards the South, fearing that his moderate plan would leave in place the political and economic structure that permitted slavery in the South. Many Congressmen believed that only until the South could be dismantled and rebuilt with more Northern philosophies, slaves would never be able to enjoy the benefits of freedom: social, political, and economic freedom.
Rich Yeselson writes in his essay entitled “Fortress Unionism”, that the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 was the beginning of the end for private sector unions. He says that the Taft-Hartley act “stopped labor dead in its tracks at a point when unions were large, growing, and confident of their economic and political power.” He believes that without this law, that restricts the activities and power of labor unions, the U.S. would not have seen union density flatten and then make a dramatic decline, but rather would have seen Union membership continuing to thrive. “Taft-Hartley meant unions needed more and more lawyers to untangle the welter of laws, decisions and contract that now ensnared labor” (Yeselson, 2013). Another point the article makes was that the workers recent attempts to form new unions were not strong enough because it is harder to organize on a large...
Unions have an extensive history of standing up for workers. They have advocated rights of steelworkers, coal miners, clothing factory employees, teachers, health care workers, and many others. The labor movement is based on the idea that organized workers as a group have more power than individuals would have on their own. The key purpose of any union is to negotiate contracts, making sure workers are respected and fairly compensated for their work. “In theory” unions are democratic organizations, resulting in varying inner authority. Workers look for security within a job a...
As part of the Square Deal to control corporations, a series of new measures and policies were created and approved to ensure and protect laborer rights on a federal level. Prior to Roosevelt, the federal government barely supported labor— rather it used injunctions and military actions against labor union strikes, as demonstrated by the railroad strikes of 1877 and the Pullman Strike of 1894. However, during his presidency, Roosevelt wanted a compromise between workers and corporations, and was quick to eschew the use of federal troops, although not as quick to recognize unions. His solution to strikes, influenced partly by the Anthracite coal strike of 1902 and other labor unrests, was the establishment of the “Square Deal” that met the demands of ...
The Homestead Lockout and Strike of 1892 had an enormous impact on the labor movement of the late 19th century. This event brought up a huge debate between what workers thought they deserved and their management’s opposing views. Carnegie, for example, wanted to pay his employees according to the inflation or deflation of the price of steel. More importantly, he also wanted to do away with unions, because they didn’t agree with his terms and he refused to negotiate. This resulted in the initial lockout, which was a precursor to the strike.
One of the first goals of Reconstruction was to readmit the Confederate states into the Union, and during the debate in Congress over how to readmit the states, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments were ratified. The United States had three different presidents between 1865 and 1877, who all had different opinions as to how the actions of readmitting the states should be carried out. President Lincoln devised the Ten Percent Plan in an effort to get the Confederate states to rejoin the Union. In Lincoln's plan, all Confederates, other than high-ranking officials, would be pardoned if they would swear allegiance to the Union and promise to obey its laws. Once ten percent of the people on the 1860 voting lists took the oath of allegiance, the state would be free to form a state government, and would be readmitted to the Union. Many of the Republicans in Congress were angered by this plan, because they believed that it was too lenient. After President Lincoln was assassinated, Andrew Johnson assumed the presidency with a new plan, which became known as Presiden...
After the Civil War, the South needed to rejoin the North to become a United States. President Abraham Lincoln was very lenient with the idea of restoring the states with the Union. He developed a plan called the Ten-Percent Plan, which proclaimed that ten percent of the southern states’ population needed to pledge to be loyal to the United States. After Lincoln’s assassination, President Andrew Johnson took over. He was much more lenient towards the South than Lincoln was, giving the South the right to regulate their actions. For example, African Americans could be controlled, but still couldn’t be bought nor sold. Slavery technically ended, but the new sharecropper sy...
Before you can form an opinion on unions, you must first understand how they operate. Labor unions are organizations of wageworkers in a specific field that lobby their specific inte...
Even till now unions have been overall successful; they have been capable of the task to establish rights and equality to all workers. They gave workers better working conditions, minimum wage, maximum hours, and benefits, such as overtime and fringe benefits. This made being a labor worker an actually decent job to peruse and have as a career. It helped also make labor workers an actually important part of society and of construction that is key to beginning and finishing a project. Even though some people may have mix feelings towards union it has impacted labor rights in a fruitful way.
Unions allow the workers to ask for their rights as employees. Unions can enforce job security standard in a relatively fast and inexpensive forum. Unions can contest disparate treat...