The reconstruction of the United States after the civil war was a challenging task. It was such a challenging task that some said that the reconstruction itself was a war. The largest obstacles were the fact that the Northerners demanded punishment to the Southerners and the Southerners wished to continue their lifestyle. My proposition is a way of reconstruction that I believe would have caused the least amount of damage and would have helped unite the United States in a sufficient manner. I propose that the slaves are emancipated, and granted the same equality as white citizens, but they may not vote or hold any high political positions. I also believe that in order for a state to readmit to the Union 1/10 of the population must swear …show more content…
an oath of loyalty. Lastly I propose that the southern states initially have representation in Congress by northerners who the Southerners elect. This last part of my plan is punishment to the south for the splitting of the country and it would please the thousands of northerners who believe they deserve a punishment. I have made my reconstruction plan by looking at Lincoln’s and Jackson’s plans and also by looking at the effect of those plans. Lincoln’s plan was solid, but Congress did not agree with a large part of it.
The main points in his plan were “1- A general amnesty would be granted to all who would take an oath of loyalty to the United States and pledge to obey all federal laws pertaining to slavery. 2- High Confederate officials and military leaders were to be temporarily excluded from the process. 3- When one tenth of the number of voters who had participated in the 1860 election had taken the oath within a particular state, then that state could launch a new government and elect representatives to Congress” (United States History). Congress wanted the south to be punished and they rejected any representatives that were from the south. Lincoln’s plan was based more on equality and he didn’t focus enough on how the people were currently feeling about the situation and each other. Andrew Jackson had a plan similar to Lincoln’s and Congress also refused to house representatives from the south under his …show more content…
plan. I agree with Lincoln’s plan greatly and by making small adjustments to his plan people would be happier overall.
Lincoln allowing blacks to hold political positions made southerners extremely furiated, and thus the Klu Klux Klan began. I believe if blacks were given their freedom, ability to own land, and equality between races it would have improved the outcome. This would be a large step towards equality, but wouldn’t be as large of a step as Lincoln took. I believe Lincoln took too large of a step at once and that is why numerous people disapproved it. Thus being said, when looking at the 13th and 14th amendment I support them and would include them in my plan of reconstruction. The pro to this part of my plan; the whites in the country would not be as angry and may have approved of it more than Lincoln’s. The con to my plan is that the blacks would not be as equal with whites as they should be, and it would take longer for them to have the equality they
deserve. I also believe that if 1/10 of a population of a state were to take an oath of loyalty the readmission of the states would be more peaceful. This oath would ensure that the southern states would not try to break away again and prove that they truly desire to be a part of the United States. The third part of my plan is to please Congress, which could not have been done by the other plans. I would have momentarily not allowed southerners to have representatives in Congress and would force them to elect someone from the North. I understand that this would cause much debate, but it would subsequently punish the South and be a fair compromise. This would also please Congress and the thousands of northern citizens who believed the South deserved punishment. The pros to this aspect of my plan is that it would please congress and the northerners. The con to this part is the disappointment of the southerners, but over time their right to elect representatives would be returned. I believe my plan would prove successful because it satisfies as many people as possible and would help unite the United States once again.
“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
After the great battle of the American Civil War was fought, and the North won, a bigger battle still had to take place; reconstruction. Reconstruction after the war was not going to be easy, and it was not. What was the primary goal? What should be done to ex-confederates? Free Blacks? How should this reconstruction take place? Many of these questions were solved by the government, but how well? Reconstruction could have gone very differently, and that is what I intend to show. I will develop my own reconstruction policy for the United States after the American Civil War, dealing with several critical points, and the overall re-integration of the south into the Union. My policy is based on equality for the South and North, and making sure that a political balance and a balance of economic power was restored as much as possible.
Abraham Lincoln's position on slavery was the belief that the expansion of it to Free states and new territories should be ceased and that it eventually be abolished completely throughout the country. He believed simply that slavery was morally wrong, along with socially and politically wrong in the eyes of a Republican. Lincoln felt that this was a very important issue during the time period because there was starting to be much controversy between the Republicans and the Democrats regarding this issue. There was also a separation between the north and the south in the union, the north harboring the Free states and the south harboring the slave states. Lincoln refers many times to the Constitution and its relations to slavery. He was convinced that when our founding fathers wrote the Constitution their intentions were to be quite vague surrounding the topic of slavery and African-Americans, for the reason that he believes was because the fathers intended for slavery to come to an end in the distant future, in which Lincoln refers to the "ultimate extinction" of slavery. He also states that the men who wrote the constitution were wiser men, but obviously did not have the experience or technological advances that the men of his day did, hence the reasons of the measures taken by our founding fathers.
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.
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.
...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”
It was a delicate balancing act because it defined the war as a war against slavery, not the war between the northern and southern people, and at the same time, it protected Lincoln’s position with conservatives, and there was no turning back. Thousands of slaves had “voted with their feet” for emancipation; blacks and their white allies celebrated with praise songs. Another piece of evidence, the Thirteenth Amendment, proved that Lincoln deserved the title “The Great Emancipator”. Lincoln came to see black soldiers as “the great available and yet unavailable force for restoring the Union”. African American people helped secure equal rights for their people.
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 memory of massive death was still in the front of everyone’s mind, hardening into resentment and sometimes even hatred. The south was virtually non-existent politically or economically, and searching desperately for a way back in. Along with these things, now living amongst the population were almost four million former slaves, who had no idea how to make a living on their own. They had been freed by the 13th amendment in 1865, and in the future became a great concern to many political leaders. Still, it was no secret that something had to be done. So, as usually happens, political leaders appeared on the stage, each holding their own plan of Reconstruction, each certain their ideas were the correct ones. One of the first people who came up with a blueprint for Reconstruction was the president at the time, Abraham Lincoln. The “Lincoln Plan” was a very open one, stating that after certain criteria were met a confederate state could return to the union. To rejoin, a state had to have ten percent of voters both accept the emancipation of slaves and swear loyalty to the union. Also, those high ranking officers of the state could not hold office or carry out voting rights unless the president said
In a speech that Lincoln gave prior to his presidency, we can see how ambiguous his stance on slavery truly was. This speech, known as the ‘House Divided’ speech, was given on the 16th of June, 1858, and outlined his beliefs regarding secession, but did not solidify the abolition of slavery as his main goal. Lincoln states that the nation “could not endure, permanently half slave and half free,” and that the slavery will either cease to exist, or will encompass all states lawfully (Lincoln). At this point in his life, Lincoln’s primary concern is clearly with the preservation of the nation.
Contrary to what today’s society believes about Lincoln, he was not a popular man with the South at this time. The South wanted to expand towards the West, but Lincoln created a geographical containment rule keeping slavery in the states it currently resided in. Despite his trying to rationalize with the South, Lincoln actually believed something different ”Lincoln claimed that he, like the Founding Fathers, saw slavery in the Old South as a regrettable reality whose expansion could and should be arrested, thereby putting it on the long and gradual road ”ultimate extinction” (216). He believed it to be “evil” thus “implying that free southerners were evil for defending it”(275). Lincoln wanted to wipe out slavery for good, and the South could sense his secret motives.
However, this was not good enough for Congress, which at the time was dominated by Radical Republicans who fervently called for social and economic change in the south, specifically the rights of blacks. They were especially concerned with guaranteeing black civil and voting rights, and criticized Lincoln for excluding this in the original plan for Reconstruction. After Lincoln’s death in 1865, Andrew Johnson turned Reconstruction on its head. He made several changes to the Reconstruction policy, nearly cutting Congress completely off from the process. Johnson began putting white supremacists in power of the Reconstruction government.
Aside from the presidential reconstruction, the Congressional Reconstruction was also taking place. The Congressman disagreed with both Lincoln and Johnson’s plans for Reconstruction. Their main two goals was to integrate African Americans into society by granting them citizenship and the right to vote, and the second goal was to destroy the political powers that former slaveholders had in the South. They first implemented these ideas by passing the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 gave African Americans citizenship and forbade states from passing discriminatory laws. Although the black codes came about and Andrew Johnson vetoed the bill, Congress had the power to override his veto. This shows that even though the President is the leader of the nation, the Constitution guarantees that Congress has some measure of influence over the President and may chose to block his procedures, Check and Balances. With success, Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment, which states that all persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of the country. All citizens were entitled to equal protection under law and be given their rights. The Congress agreed that if the Confederate states ratified the Fourteenth Amendment they could come back into the Union. Having not followed the Congress request, Congressed passed the Reconstruction Act of 1867. This forced the Confederate states to undergo Reconstruction as the Congress wanted. To ensure that Southerners could not change their state constitution in the future, they passed the Fifteenth Amendment and the last congressional Reconstruction law, another Civil Rights
While Abraham Lincoln detested slavery and personally believed that the coloured people of America deserved full legal status, he was a politician and his priority was always keeping America unified. Lincoln abhorred slavery, and thought it a great evil both morally and from the standpoint of what it had done to the country; he considered it the biggest problem with America. While he did believe that African Americans were an inferior race and did not want to grant them full equality, he was absolutely determined that the constitution should apply to them just as much as any white citizen of America. In his time as a senator and Presidential nominee, and for a while after becoming President, his priority was simply to stop the spread of slavery and keep it in its current boundaries. Over the long term Lincoln did not believe the two races could live together and as a Senator considered shipping African Americans to Liberia, which he abandoned after realizing it was extremely impractical and a death sentence to those it was supposed to free. After becoming President Lincoln considered the much closer, safer, and economically viable Central America, but eventually dropped it as freed slaves were unresponsive. While starting his first term as President he attempted to stop the secession of the southern states and ameliorate the citizens by insisting slavery would be allowed to remain as it had been before, prioritizing the Union over the slaves. Later in his first term, and into his early second, Lincoln proposed a compensated emancipation system , believing that if the states that had seceded realized others would not join the Confederacy they would be more inclined to rejoin the Union. After all other solutions failed to gain a...