Purpose Of Reconstruction

To the Radical Republicans, Johnson's plan seemed no better than Lincoln's because it failed to address the needs of former slaves in three prominent areas: land, voting rights, and protection under the law. Confederates states, however, readily committed to the conditions put forth in the Presidential Reconstruction plan, and were readmitted to the Union. A few years later, the Reconstruction Act of 1867 was passed, which did not recognize the governments formed under Lincoln and Johnson's plans. Through the Reconstruction Act, Tennessee was the only former Confederate State recognized as having been readmitted to the Union because it had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment. In order for the rest of the former Confederate states to be readmitted to the Union through the Reconstruction Act, each state had to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment, also. The Republicans introduced the Fifteenth Amendment after the election of 1868 because they feared that Pro-Confederate Southern whites might try to place limits on black suffrage. In order to prevent this, the Fifteenth Amendment states that no one can be kept from voting because of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude." Through the different plans that were proposed by the three different Presidents in office during the Reconstruction period, the Thirteenth,

Initially, came Abraham Lincoln’s presidential reconstruction plan. This plan was known as the Ten Percent Plan. It stated that a southern state could re-enter into the Union in which they succeeded from if they acquire 10 percent of voters who swear an oath of allegiance to the Union. This was from the election of 1860 during the voter rolls. Once these voters swore an oath to the Union, they could then elect and draft in chosen delegates to do things such as draft state constitutions as well as create new governments for states. All the southerners who weren’t official government or army officers were granted pardons, and also had been granted protection of their private property. This did not include their slaves. Overall, Lincoln’s plan

Congress comes in to play in December 1865. The Congress was made up mostly of Republicans and they refused to let past Confederates to take their seats in Congress at this time. This marked the beginning of Radical Reconstruction or sometimes known as Congressional Reconstruction. The president and the congress did not agree on many issues. Congress overrode President Johnson on the Civil Rights Act of 1866, The Fourteenth Amendment, and the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill. The Fourteenth Amendment spelled out rights of both black and white citizens as equal. It prolonged Federal powers for the enforcement of civil rights. States that approved the Fourteenth Amendment were considered reconstructed, and Tennessee did so. President Johnson advised other southern states to oppose doing this. Congress passed many laws to limit President Johnson’s powers. They passed the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 which set new

Abraham Lincoln started all that before he was in office, so imagine what he did when he became president of the United States. When Lincoln was elected there was a long series of policy clashes between the South and the North. The clash wasn’t just about slavery. It was a clash of elites. The Northern elite wanted economic expansion. Such as, free land; free labor, free market, and much more. Lincoln had all of this in mind, even the slaves. The slaves saw Lincoln as their ticket to freedom. The South was for slavery, so when they notice Lincoln was trying to abolish slavery they started to secede from the union. Lincoln tried to get some of the states back and more seceded. The confederacy was formed; the civil war was on.

After the Civil War, the United States had many problems to solve. The country had to figure out how to integrate newly freed slaves into society and bring the former Confederate states back into the Union. Reconstruction was period of time after the civil war in which the United States addressed these problems. Reconstruction had two different phases: Presidential Reconstruction took place from 1865 to 1867, and Congressional Reconstruction took place from 1867 to 1877. Presidential Reconstruction began with Abraham Lincoln, who proposed the Proclamation of Amnesty and the ten percent oath plan. Lincoln was focused on leniency and forgiveness; under his plan southerners would take an oath of loyalty to the Union, and after only ten percent of a state’s voters had taken this oath, the state could be readmitted. After Lincoln’s assassination, Andrew Johnson took over Reconstruction. Johnson wanted to punish landowners, but liberally handed out pardons, as he greatly enjoyed the power that he had over southerners. Under Johnson, former confederates were re-elected, and southern states discriminated blacks. Eventually, Congress took over Reconstruction. During Congressional Reconstruction, the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments were passed, and the freedman’s bureau was created. Overall, the failures of Reconstruction outweighed the failures because it took a very long time for it to achieve its goals, and the South was still able to

At the end of the Civil War slavery was outlawed by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution and the blacks was finally free. In the South there was a sense of anger and shame in losing the war. The Reconstruction era was put into effect by Congress in 1866 and lasted until 1877. Reconstruction was aimed at reorganizing the Southern states after the Civil War. The reconstruction plan granted the means for readmitting the southern states into the Union, and tried to come up with the methods by which whites and blacks could live together in a non-slave society. However during reconstruction the United States government took actions to protect freedman and with each action the south countered with actions that would try to eradicate the laws put in place by the winning northern forces for example, the infamous Jim Crow Laws. The law segregated the whites and the blacks, thus can be commonly heard as “separate is not equal.” The Reconstruction was still seen as a success towards the United States as a whole in many ways as it unified the nations.

Abraham Lincoln had very unique views and ideas on how Reconstruction should be planned. He wanted to make the South’s return to the Union “as quick and easy as possible” (McDougal Littell, 2005, page 377). He also came up with the Ten Percent Plan, which meant that the government

Lincoln was the person who came up with the Reconstruction plan. As the leader of this newly reunited nation, Lincoln sought a very specific plan for reconstructing the South and solving all the issues they are facing. Lincoln’s ultimate goals were to reunify the states and ensure equality for all, including freed slaves. After all the rearrangement, all freedmen are allowed to vote, freedmen are now can be educated, and the South is known as a state that holds the most slavery, but now the South has changed into the state filled with impressive varieties. Lincoln was very passion about freed slaves and made every citizens in United State, especially the South has equal treating to everyone including voting.

With all the support that was spreading towards blacks because of the Freedmen’s Bureau the Southern states continued to make it hard on blacks by creating the Black Codes, these were laws that were supposed to make lives of black people unfair towards everybody else. The congress seen what the South was trying to do so they attempted to pass the Civil Rights Act that would guarantee blacks protection and equality, but President Johnson vetoed it. For a couple of years after the start of the Reconstruction Era President Johnson was not fulfilling many of his plans toward it. President Johnson was running the country very unfairly but then was confronted by Thaddeus Stevens. Thaddeus Stevens was the congressman responsible for leading charge to impeach Johnson.

The government had multiple plans for reconstruction and President Lincoln had one in specific. He favored a policy that “Southern white unionists (former Whigs) could become the nucleus of the new loyal state

Although the purpose of Reconstruction was to help the country back on track and assist in getting rights for black Americans, it ended with the country in turmoil and all the rights given, stripped away again. The Civil War ended and there was much promise for freedom and equality. These hopes were dashed by the new laws restricting these black Americans from living how they please. The rights were given and taken, not given back for years. The voting laws passed in the south took away a constitutional right from citizens of America. The Jim Crow Laws segregated an entire society over the shade of the skin.

During the reconstruction period, the south experienced tremendous changes. New leaders were elected and with new leaders being elected that caused a corruption within the government. They were concerned that with a new leader, there would be new laws that would interfere with the rights given to free slaves. In January of 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation to abolish slavery among all states. After

He was stuck between freeing the slaves or saving the Union. The Northern states wanted him to free the slaves but the Southern states left the union for that very reason, the possibility of losing their slaves, and went to war against the North. Lincoln was facing a very hard decision that would affect the entire country. Abolishing slavery would mean to permanently end the practice and thus grant slaves their

Lincoln viewed Reconstruction as part of the larger effort to win the war and abolish slavery. He wanted to weaken the Confederacy by creating new state governments that could win broad support from southern white people. With Lincoln’s vision, he wanted things to be over quickly he didn’t want it to be dragged out and a long process. Lincoln’s plan angered the Radical Republicans (who advocated not only equal rights for the freedman but also a tougher stance toward the white South). Lincoln biggest fear was that if they asked for 50 percent instead of the 10 percent that it would continue the war making it longer and costlier for the United States. Unfortunately, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth on April 14th, 1865. At the time of his assassination, Lincoln’s reconstruction policy remained unsettled and

President Lincoln’s Reconstruction plan was started before the Civil War even ended. He wanted to reunify the North and South in his plan called the “Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction”, in this plan he would