After the results of the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln wished to quickly rebuild the country by reintroducing the Confederation back into the country and progressing the nation as a whole. He had a plan to build back state governments that were lost to the Confederacy as long as a fraction of the state recognized the end of slavery and pledged their allegiance to America. However, this plan would not go into effect due to his assassination on April 14, 1865. Lincoln paved the way for Reconstruction, the movement that aimed to allow African Americans to gain a foothold in society, especially as a result of the Emancipation Proclamation. The Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order that outlawed slavery. Lincoln’s ideas for Reconstruction …show more content…
Johnson’s beliefs were vastly different to those of Lincoln. Paragraph 2, Source 1, states that “They had found Lincoln’s plans overly conciliatory, and were reluctant to readmit former Confederate states to the Union. Initially, Johnson appeared to agree with them.” However, he agreed with Lincoln in that he wished to swiftly assimilate the former Confederates back into the Union. Yet, he did not have the same intentions as Lincoln. Lincoln wanted to quickly get the country back to normal so as to progress as a nation. Johnson, however, wished to do this for the reason that he did not see the Confederates as traitors. As paragraph 3 of Source 1 states, “Johnson had no intention of taking Reconstruction further.” Andrew Johnson would go on to encourage allowing ex-Confederate representatives into Congress. Congress eventually saw some hope of initiating Reconstruction when they denied ex-Confederate soldiers their seats. In doing this, they were able to pass the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments and allow for militarized Reconstruction. The 13th Amendment was made to ban slavery except when imprisoned. The 14th Amendment gives any American citizen equal rights under the
Abraham Lincoln became the United States' 16th President in 1861, delivering the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy in 1863. If there is a part of the United States history that best characterizes it, it is the interminable fight for the Civil Rights. This he stated most movingly in dedicating the military cemetery at Gettysburg: "that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. The Declaration of Independence states “All men are created equal”. Even when the Amendment abolished slavery in 1865, and the black people embraced education, built their own churches, reunited with their broken families and worked very hard in the sharecropping system, nothing was enough for the Reconstruction to succeed.
Abraham Lincoln is known as the President who helped to free the slaves, lead the Union to victory over the confederates in the American Civil War, preserve the union of the United States and modernize the economy. The Emancipation Proclamation, issued through Presidential constitutional authority on January 1st, 1863, declared that all slaves in the ten remaining slave states were to be liberated and remain liberated. The Emancipation Proclamation freed between three and four million slaves, however, since it was a Presidential constitutional authority and not though congress, the Emancipation Proclamation failed to free slaves in Border States like Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri. Essentially, states that were under Federal Government and loyal to the Union did not have their slaves liberated; Lincoln even stating “When it took effect in January 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation freed 3.1 million of the nation's 4 million slaves.” Some argue Lincoln issued this Proclamation in an attempt to satisfy the demands of Radical Republicans, members of a group within the Republican Party. Radical Republicans were a group of politicians who strongly...
After the Civil War, America went through a period of Reconstruction. This was when former Confederate states were readmitted to the Union. Lincoln had a plan that would allow them to come back, but they wouldn’t be able to do it easily. He would make 10% of the population swear an oath of loyalty and establish a government to be recognized. However, he was assassinated in Ford’s Theater and Andrew Johnson became the president; Johnson provided an easy path for Southerners. Congress did their best to ensure equal rights to freedmen, but failed because of groups who were against Reconstruction, white southern Democrats gaining control within the government and the lack of having a plan in place for recently freedmen.
The North’s neglect and greediness caused the reconstruction to be a failure.The corrupt government, terrorist organizations, unfocused president, and ignorance were also part of the ending of the reconstruction. President Lincoln didn’t want the civil war he wanted to keep the nation together. When Lincoln went into office he wasn't planning on getting rid of slavery nor starting a civil war. Before the reconstruction era was the civil war. Many good things and bad things came from the civil war. The civil war was a war between the North and the South. The war for the north was to end slavery, but for the south it was about rights and liberty. It wasn’t until afterwards that Americans started to notice the good and the bad. Not as many people
“The best way to predict your future is to create it” (Lincoln). President states the principal of Reconstruction, where to unite the United States, there must be an authoritative action to carry it out. The Reconstruction Era (1863-1877) is a period where Lincoln sought to restore the divided nation by uniting the confederates and the union and to involve the freedmen into the American society. The main objectives were to initially restore the union, to rebuild the South and to enact progressive legislation for the rights of the freed slaves. Thus, the executive and legislature branches had enacted a series of polices to “create the future” for the United States. Although the policies tied down to the Reconstructive motive, there was controversy
Following Lincoln’s tragic assassination, President Andrew Johnson took on the accountability of making Reconstruction a reality. Andrew Johnson wanted to use Lincoln’s ideas of reconstruction but in a modified form. Since Congress would be in recess for eight more months Johnson decided to go ahead with his plan. Johnson's goal in reconstruction was to grant amnesty to all former Confederates (except high officials), the ordinances of secession were to be revoked, Confederate debts would repudiate, and the states had to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment. Once the states swore to a loyalty oath to abide by the conditions they would be allowed to return to the Union. After swearing to the oath Confederate States would be allowed to govern themselves. With this power the states implemented the creation of a system of black codes that restricted the actions of freed slaves in much the same way, if not exactly the same way, that slaves were restricted under the old law. The end result of his plan was a hopeless conflict with the Radical Republicans who dominated Congress, passed measures over Johnson's vetoes, and attempted to limit the power of the executive concerning appointments and removals.
President Abraham Lincoln envisioned a conservative plan for the reconstruction of the south. Under Lincoln’s plan, as soon as ten percent of the voters in a southern state whom have voted in 1860 and had taken an oath of loyalty to the United States, they could then elect constitutional conventions. These conventions, upon adopting new state constitutions and abolishing slavery they would then be readmitted to the union. The assassination of Abraham Lincoln would change polices towards reconstruction of the south.
In the words of President Abraham Lincoln during his Gettysburg Address (Doc. A), the Civil War itself, gave to our Nation, “a new birth of freedom”. The Civil War had ended and the South was in rack and ruin. Bodies of Confederate soldiers lay lifeless on the grounds they fought so hard to protect. Entire plantations that once graced the South were merely smoldering ash. The end of the Civil War and the abolishment of slavery, stirred together issues and dilemmas that Americans, in the North and South, had to process, in hopes of finding the true meaning of freedom.
...ights for African Americans as well as a political rights for the people, his goal was to abolish slavery and felt that “all men created equally” should uphold for everybody, everybody that was man at least. Johnson the president, in the beginning proved to be loyal to his radicals by chastising the confederacy making sure there would be repercussions for their actions. Also his amnesty plan to reinstate the south states was far harsher than that of Lincoln's. Johnson’s sanctions deprived confederacy officers, people in high power, and anyone who owned valuable assets could be subject to confiscation. The purpose was to shift political power in south and reward it to freed blacks and white southerners who stayed neutral during the war. Hahn states in his article that, “During reconstruction, black men held political offices in every state of the former confederacy”
As President, Johnson decided to follow Lincolns plans by granting amnesty to almost all former confederates; establishing a Provisional government; and ratifying the thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery. However, Johnson was not the same man as Lincoln for he was quite unpopular, especially with Congress. As the south was in a transitional period, its politics were changing as well. First, the Reconstruction Act allowed blacks to v...
The signing of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 led to public anger and mistrust especially for slave-owners in the South. The Emancipation Proclamation declared, “that all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious states “are, and henceforward shall be free” (archives.gov). Lincoln intended to pave the way for African Americans freedom by abolishing slavery in the United States. Lincoln’s support to end slavery reflected the opposite of a racist individual; he believed that
Andrew Johnson desire to have an easy fast restoration to union to his southern counterparts further hurt the chances of civil rights for African Americans to be established. It was 1865 and these African Americans had just been freed and the thought of saying that they were equal to whites horrified and discussed many white people. And Johnson unwillingness to slow down the reconstruction process was a complete determinate to the African Americans who wanted and deserved civil rights. In the Pbs video “American experience-reconstruction” historian blight refers to this by saying “There was good evidence in 1865 that a lot of white Southerners, the leadership even of the Confederacy, would have accepted relatively harsh policies at that moment. But very soon it became clear that Andrew Johnson wanted a rapid, lenient restoration of the Union with as little alteration of the Constitution and the creation of black civil and political rights as possible”. This shows us that black civil rights was on the b...
Lincoln wished to destroy the South and instill it with ideas from the anti-slave North. Blacks would be free to work for themselves as freemen. The South took the Emancipation Proclamation as the Nation’s biggest atrocity committed on its own people in history. Some slave owning Northerners claimed it was unconstitutional and would lead to violent slave uprisings and the taking of white man’s jobs. This was an “act of justice” that needed to be signed and ratified (Chapter 14, pp. 447). Lincoln knew that this was an important moment in history when he said: “If my name ever goes into history, it was for this act” (Chapter 14, pp. 447). This is what Lincoln would be remembered for in the years to come. His name went down in history as the President
Lincoln’s original goal was to hold the nation together through the Civil War and Reconstruction and in this his goal was a success. The South was politically and economically non-existent and desperately searching a way to get back in. The Confederacy was destroyed and every state in America that was seceded was readmitted to the Union. Slavery was outlawed by the federal government with the 13th Amendment in 1865. This became a great concern to powerful political leaders in the future. This concern emerged ideas of their own plans of Reconstruction. The president at the time, Abraham Lincoln, presented his own version of Reconstruction. His plan stated that a certain criteria had to be met for a confederate state if the state wished to return to the Union. Before Lincoln was able to test out his plan, he was assassinated in 1865. After his death the Republicans, such as Thaddeus Stevens, stood up providing is version of Reconstruction. “Thaddeus Stevens served as one of the leading radical Republicans in Congress during the Civil War and Reconstruction…Stevens supported a ‘hard’ Reconstruction of the South that would erase the gross inequalities in wealth created by slavery, but his plan plans for land redistribution were not supported by more moderate members of his party” (Schaller 161). Dividing land across South and giving 40 acres to each adult freed-man was not sought by the fellow citizens. The
Abraham Lincoln came into presidency with a strong promise to abolish slavery in the United States. The thought of this furthered tension of an already crippling nation. The southern slave states came to the conclusion of making a new nation called the Confederate States of America, which would later become known as The Confederacy. Although the