There were two very different options of bills: the 10% Plan, and the Wade-Davis Bill. Lincoln’s 10% plan would be the most beneficial to the United States because the country would remain united, making 10% of people take the oath is reasonable, and the plan is more forward-thinking. The 10% plan would be best for the country in the future, while the Wade-Davis bill focused on people’s emotions after the end of the war. One of the reasons that Lincoln’s plan would be most beneficial to the United States is it would keep the states united as one country. Since the 10% Plan is less harsh than the Wade-Davis bill, the South wouldn’t be as angry about their punishment and would be more motivated to put all their efforts into rejoining the nation.
I. Both, Lincoln and Johnson supported the Ten Percent Plan, that allowed each Confederate state to return to the Union as soon as 10 percent of its voters had taken a loyalty oath to the Union and the state had approved the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery. However, Johnson was a war democrat and was more forceful then Lincoln was. Lincoln wanted to help the South easily rejoin the Union by following his terms. In contrast, Johnson, who used to be against the southern planters now allied himself with ex-Confederate leaders, forgiving them when they appealed for pardons. This benefited the southerners, but angered the northerners. Northerns referred to him as a traitor. Because of Johnson the ex-Confederate leaders began to rise back
After Lincoln’s assassination, Andrew Johnson became president and was in charge of continuing his plan. He revised Lincoln’s 10% plan with the Wade-Davis Bill, now requiring 50% of white males to owe allegiance to the Union. This lead
Lincoln’s plan in 1863 involved issuing Ten- Percent Plan, to offer amnesty to any southerner if they would proclaim their loyalty to the Union and also supported the emancipation of the slaves. If ten percent of the state’s voters in the election of 1860 took this oath to the United States only then could they develop a new state government required to abolish slavery. After this then the state could reenter into the Union with complete privileges such as crucial apportionment to the Senate and House of Representatives (Schultz, n.d). However Republicans within Congress wanted to punish the South so they passed the Wade-Davis Bill which required fifty percent instead of ten percent taking an oath of loyalty. Also if southerners wanted to serve in the constitutional convention or earn the right to vote they would also have to take a second oath called the iron-clad oath which stated they had never
In December of 1863, Abraham Lincoln proposed the 10 Percent Plan as the first plan for Reconstruction. In the plan, a Confederate state would be readmitted to the Union, with a new government created, once ten percent of the state's voters had declared loyalty to the United States. These people were also required to uphold emancipation. Lincoln said that it would be "a cruel and an astounding breach of faith" for anyone to not abide by the laws of emancipation (qtd. in Goodwin 588). Anyone who took this oath received a full pardon unless they had been a Confederate official. Lincoln also thought that the entire abolition of slavery, not just in Confederate states, should be made by a Constitutional amendment. However, this plan was more of a way to try to diminish the power of the Confederacy during the Civil War than a plan to be enacted after the war was over. It was officially put into motion in some parts of Union-held territory in the South, but it was never truly supported by locals and Congress didn't recognize is it.
He felt that states should not be punished for the acts of individuals, and proposed allowing all of the Confederate states to enter the Union as long as 10% of the population of each state took an oath of allegiance to the Union. He supported pardoning all members of the Confederacy except for high ranking officials and those who committed war crimes. In general Lincoln wanted to form one nation end the war, and certainly abolish slavery forever.
The Wade Davis bill demanded that fifty percent of a Confederate states male voter population take the “ironclad” oath before reentering the Union. However, President Lincoln used his pocket veto to keep the Wade-Davis Bill from ever becoming a law. By the end of the Civil War President Lincoln’s plan for reconstruction was ultimately a bust. States like Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Virginia followed President Lincoln’s plan for readmission to the Union, but Congress refused to seat the Senators and Representatives elected from those states. President Lincoln's assassination followed shortly after and his plan for reconstruction died along with him (HighBeam Research, LLC, 2005).
With all the issues the ex-Confederate states were giving the United States government, Lincoln devised the 10% Plan that was later carried out by Johnson, while Radical Republicans created the Civil Rights Act that later helped develop the 14th Amendment. Lincoln’s 10% Plan was to be lenient with the states from the Confederacy who had seceded from the Union. The Plan said that only 10% of the voting population had to take an oath of loyalty to the Union and rewrite state constitutions accepting emancipation. Congress, disliking Lincoln’s plan, wrote the Wade-Davis Bill which stated NO pardons to be given to those ex-Confederate states and that instead of only 10% taking the oath of loyalty, 50% had to. Lincoln’s response was to pocket veto the bill. When Lincoln was assassinated Andrew Johnson became President. Now Johnson was a very troubled man, poor and from Tennessee, he grew up despising the wealthy southern plantation owners and because of this, he set out for
The plans for Reconstruction offered by Abraham Lincoln were to give a full pardon to the people that took an oath of honor and loyalty to the United States, so long as they promised to uphold all new federal laws regarding slavery. While doing this he would temporarily exclude those who held offices of high confederate and military positions. He would then allow each state to elect members to Congress, after they had 1/10 of the participating voters from the 1860 election take the oath within the state. The goal of Abraham Lincoln's Reconstruction plan was to end the war quicker and reunite the north and south.
After the war, the government tried to solve key problems facing the nation. The 10% Plan was proposed by Abraham Lincoln and its purpose was to end Reconstruction quickly. It pardoned all Ex-Confederates in the South as long as they apologized, it would only need ten percent of the voters in each state to swear allegiance to the Union, and did not offer any type of equality to the Freedmen. The 10% Plan was a short-term effect because Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth in 1865, and after he was killed and Vice President Andrew Johnson took over the idea of the 10% Plan disappeared. Another attempt to end Reconstruction by the government was proposed by the Radical Republicans in congress and was the complete
In early 1863, president Abraham Lincoln started to think about methods to use to help with the reconstruction of the South. His plan also allowed states to return to the Union if certain conditions were met. This led to the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction; this meant that a minimum of 10 percent of voters had to take a loyalty oath to the Union (Davidson, DeLay, Heyrman, Lytle, Stoff, 2013, p. 440-441). They also had to agree with the emancipation of African American slaves. Congress, on the other hand, did not agree with how lenient Lincoln was to the South. Congress countered Lincoln with the Wade-Davis Bill, which was a much stricter approach (Reconstruction: The Challenged of Freedom, 2014). President
First, there was the ten percent plan. This plan allowed each state to reenter the Union after 10 percent signed an oath of allegiance to the united states. This cause an uproar with the Republicans in which they felt that the South should receive more of a punishment than the ten percent plan. This lead to the passing of the Wade, Davis Bill. The Wade, Davis Bill bumped the percentage up to 50 percent. Lincoln voted this bill before congress went into recess. Congress created the Freed Beaurue in which helped distributed food and other necessities to the freed slaves. President Lincoln was assigned at the end of the civil war leading his plan never fully implemented. Andrew Johnson became president and he was from the South so he wanted even
Even before the war had ended, Lincoln issued the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction in 1863, his compassionate policy for dealing with the South. The Proclamation stated that all Southerners could be pardoned and reinstated as U.S. citizens if they took an oath of allegiance to the Constitution and the Union and pledged to abide by emancipation.Lincoln’s Proclamation was called the “10 percent plan”: Once 10 percent of the voting population in any state had taken the oath, a state government could be put in place and the state could be reintegrated into the Union. During and after the civil war the US had to decide how to change the federal government to better both the North and the South . Bills like the Emancipation Proclamation and 13th Amendment which freed slaves and sealed the war as a North victory.As a result of the civil war in retrospect to race relations at the time what changed in the United states of America was govennment regulations of Africans Americans, and what stayed the same was Southern Democrats aganist reconstruction, and quizi slavery.
There were many different opinions on how Reconstruction should have been handled. Johnson’s plan was extremely lenient towards the Southerners, while the Radical Republicans’ plan punished the South greatly. Lincoln’s plan was the middle ground of the spectrum. In my opinion, I believe that Lincoln’s plan would have been the most effective plan in bringing the Union back together in a stable and fair way.
Lincoln started a Reconstruction plan during the Civil War. To summarize, he implemented before his death, the Emancipation Proclamation, the 10% Plan and he tried to extend suffrage. But his Plan failed. The only thing that remained of his plan was to create the Freedmen’s Bureau, established in March 1865, to assist the newly freed slaves in transitioning to a life of slavery and a life of freedom. After
Lincoln 's goal throughout his presidency was to bring the nation back together. He argued that dividing the country is impossible simply due to geographic reasons. If the South left, how much of the national debt should they take, Lincoln wondered. Or, what would be done about runaway slaves? And, Europe would love to see the U.S. split and therefore weaken itself. Was that something Americans were willing to allow?