Summary: The Reconstruction Battle Begins

His stance on reconstruction was similar to Lincoln’s, in that he was not as harsh on the South as the Radical Republicans in Congress wanted. In May 1865, Johnson issued his Amnesty Proclamation, which required an oath of loyalty from former confederates, who would then be pardoned and have their property restored (except slaves) that had be confiscated by Federal officials during the war. The only people not included in this proclamation were high-ranking military and civilian Confederate officials and those who resigned their positions in the Federal government to serve the in the Confederacy. Johnson issued a second proclamation outlining his plan for how the states should go about getting themselves back into the Union. Under this plan, the President would appoint a governor to each state under reconstruction.

Under this plan the south was divided into five districts. Excluding Tennessee because they had already been readmitted into the Union. Each of the districts were headed by a general. The main goal of the leader was to increase voter registration of blacks and to see to it that white confederates did not get back into office as they were before. The new voters would then vote on a new constitution that allowed blacks to vote. If the majority of the voters ratified the new constitution and the fourteenth amendment then the state would be eligible for readmission to the Union. These bills covered the objectives of Radical Republicans. They called for universal suffrage, made it likely that republicans would be put into office in southern states, and they set the standards for readmission. The south had to suffer the consequences of being defeated. To ensure their acts, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act which prohibited the president from removing certain officeholders without the permission of the Senate. President Johnson deliberately violated this by firing Secretary of State Edwin Stanton. President Johnson was tried for impeachment but the Senate could not convict him.

America was in disarray following the events of the Civil War. Southern economy was in shambles while congress was struggling to find a middle ground between the radical republicans and Lincoln’s lenient policies. Many Southerners faced the aftermath of uprooting their society and their way of life while thousands of newly freed slaves struggled to find a way to support themselves. The country needed a strong leader, however on the 14th of April, 1865 President Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth in the Ford Theatre in Washington (Farmer). Without the man that had once held the nation together, the country now faced an enormous obstacle; reconstructing American economics, politics and social life.

Before the end of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln began formulating a plan to restore the Confederate states to the Union. His Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction which was being planned in December of 1863, “Provided that if at least ten percent of a state's voters in the 1860 election accepted emancipation and took an oath of allegiance to the United States, then the state could form a new government and return to the Union.” Blacks, who were obviously ignored upon in the 1860 voting, as well as most Confederate officials and army officers of the confederacy. These officials and officers were disenfranchised unless they appealed for and received a presidential pardon from Abraham Lincoln himself. The Radical Republicans considered

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.

As a country, America has gone though many political changes throughout its lifetime. Leaders have come and gone, and all of them have had their own objectives and plans for the future. As history has taken its course, though, almost all of these “revolutionary movements” have come to an end. One such movement was Reconstruction. Reconstruction was a violent period that defined the defeated South’s status in the Union and the meaning of freedom for ex-slaves. Though, like many things in life, it did come to an end, and the resulting outcome has been labeled both a success and a failure.

After the Civil war ended, the United States had to reintegrate both a formerly slave population and a formerly rebellious population back into the country. After Lincoln was assassinated, Andrew Johnson was guiding Reconstruction. He was a Southerner, he resented all the elites in the south who had snubbed him, and he was also a racist who didn’t think that blacks should have any role in Reconstruction. Between 1865 and 1867, Johnson appointed provisional governors and ordered them to all state conventions to establish new all-white governments. Those governments looks suspiciously like the old confederate governments they had replaced. Many schools were established at that time. Johnson ordered all land

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

Reconstruction was to be what took place following the end of the American Civil War. To most scholars this is true. However, to truly understand the magnitude of reconstruction, one must take the path less traveled as Eric Foner did in his book, Reconstruction; America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877. What is that? 1863? Yes, Foner believes that reconstruction officially started then with the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Why, you may ask. The reasoning behind this premise is simple, when the proclamation was signed it marked a change or “adjustment of American society to end slavery.” (xxv) With the end of an historical style Southern life, slavery, reconstruction officially started. This change in direction is hard to comprehend, especially since most of us have been taught the exact years of reconstruction and the civil war for following between two distinct time lines. The alteration, however, is a good alteration and a welcomed one if you have an open mind and are eager to assume the responsibility of an improved understanding this crucial alteration. This alteration can be examined by looking at certain aspects of reconstruction and the impact of each facet as it pertains to the new outlook of reconstruction. So, sit back and take a journey of improved understanding to how reconstruction has been transformed by Foner.

Reconstruction was a time of turmoil in the United States, and no area was more negatively impacted than the south. The decision made by the South to rejoin the Union after the Civil war was a decision met with criticism and rebellion. The Texans demonstrated the conflict and tension between the Union soldiers and Southern inhabitants, and for those reasons it was an accurate representation of life in 1865 Texas.

Reconstruction has been called the second greatest crisis faced by the United States of America, the first being the Civil War. The war had been won, but now the American government and people faced the challenge of rebuilding everything that had been torn down into a new nation. Many difficulties were faced, and in some ways the war continued to be fought. This time, everything from the courthouse to the bus seats served as the battleground. The nation was demanding change, and yet was unwilling to create it. Illustrating the rollercoaster of victories and defeats that was Reconstruction, W.E.B. Du Bois said, “The slave went free, stood a brief moment in the sun, then moved back again towards slavery”. For African Americans, change was painstakingly gradual and often seemed to far to ever arrive, but was nonetheless closer than ever before. Reconstruction was a failure to a mixed extent, initially yielding signs of social and political improvement in the lives of African Americans, but showing mostly negative effects in the long term, such as unfavorable economic developments and the triggering of a vicious response from white extremists that repealed much of the progress formerly made.

Reconstruction failed to secure permanent citizenship rights for African Americans due to the growing numbers of the terroristic Ku Klux Klan participants in the south after the Civil War. African Americans also had trouble with interracial challenges between themselves and whites, almost as if segregation had replaced “slavery”. The legislation of the government of the United States poorly executed the citizenship rights of blacks after the Civil War.

After the Civil war, the Union was reestablished in racism. Reconstruction was the constitutional effort (13th, 14th, 15th amendment) of the north to force the south to treat the freed slaves as citizens. Reconstruction failed miserably. It is one of the least glorious parts of American history. Some nationalists like to think that there are no badly edifying chapters of America, and decide to forget about it. The civil war was one of the big three events along with the Revolution and World War Two. Everybody knows about the civil war, but when it comes to reconstruction, most of my friends have never heard of it. I think it is a travesty and just ignorant of our society to not teach about Reconstruction in history classes. Reconstruction

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

Following the Civil War, life in the south was dramatically changed. America faced an arduous task of rebuilding the devastated economy and social infrastructure in former Confederate states. This new movement was known as the Reconstruction era, and it was responsible for the emergence of a multifaceted industrialization of manufactured goods and transportation networks. In the book, Steel Drivin’ Man, Scott Reynolds Nelson conveys the intensity of political debate during the Reconstruction era. The conflict revolved around the role of the federal government in domestic affairs as well as the status of recently freed African-American slaves. This period marked the emergence of John Henry, a former African-American slave that became a