As the Civil War came to a conclusion, there were a lot of problems facing the nation, especially the South. Land in the South was in ruins. Homeless refugees, both African-American and white needed food, shelter, and work. Americans were forced to reach down deep and overcome a lot of adversity to bring the North and South together as one. President Lincoln wanted to make it easy for the southern states to rejoin the Union. His goal was to close up wounds of war as quickly as possible. In December 1863, President Lincoln introduced a model for reinstatement of the Southern states called the Ten Percent Plan. This proposed a plan that if ten percent of a state’s voters swore an oath of loyalty to the United States, the voters could …show more content…
President Lincoln and the other Republicans hoped that they would see a strong Republican Party in the south. Lincoln thought that his more laid back, softer and more lenient policy would win the support of some influential southern supporters. The Radical Republicans, who were supporters of strict policy in the south, disagreed with the President. They made the case that their strict plan would keep the people that led the South into secession from regaining power and weakening the control of the Radical Republicans. It was important to deal urgently with the needs of the freedmen, as well as the other war refugees. In March of 1865, Congress created the Freedmen’s Bureau. Providing emergency relief to the people displaced by the war was their first priority. The Freedman’s Bureaus also set up schools to teach the freedmen to read and write. Due to the want and need for education, many African American communities then set up their own schools. They would come together and gather up any extra money to pay the teachers. According to some sources, the schools were strict like military schools, and were often so poor that most of the testing came in the oral form. (civilwar.org) Many of the teachers were northern white women, but for the most part, they were African American women. With public education now an option for African Americans, they were given the same rights toward education as the white children were. The Bureau helped extend the education
This plan was supported by Benjamin F. Wade and Henry W. Davis. A number of Republicans on Congress felt Lincoln’s plan was too likely to fall under secessionists who were disloyal, therefore Congress passed the Wade-Davis plan that was to be less lenient and more demanding. This plan, or bill, as some state, instead needed 50 percent of participating voters of a state to swear to a loyalty oath. Differing from Lincoln’s plan, this plan permitted only those who were non-Confederates to vote for new constitutions for states. Lincoln did not approve of this, resulting in him not signing it and later pocket vetoing it to kill the bill. From this point on, he and Congress were in opposition. The reason this plan was passed was because Congress found Lincoln’s plan to be too lenient and worried that slavery would continue on in response to it. They made the requirements far stricter to get what they wanted for congressional reconstruction, which was purely revenge. This was also known as radical
Another important characteristic of the Reconstruction after the civil war was the creation of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Its responsibilities according to Foner (2014) were related with social work, “ Bureau agents were supposed to establish schools, provide aid to the poor and aged, settle disputes between whites and blacks and among the freedpeople, and secure for former slaves and white Unionists equal treatment before the courts” (p. 562) . Still, the Bureau lasted only until 1870, but made many achievements helping the black community.
During the age of reconstruction, the freedman’s bureau launched the opening of up to 1000 schools for African American children presiding in the south. An assortment of north- sponsored colleges made for African
The Radical Republicans found Lincoln’s approach far too lenient, and strongly expressed their opposition. They zealously sought to punish the South for initiating the Civil War. The Radical Republicans criticized the President’s Ten Percent Plan, and were resolute in readmitting southern states only after slavery had been abolished, the newly freed black slaves (freedmen) were given full rights, and the power of the planter class destroyed.
They helped provide education for the freed African Americans. According to the Virginia Historical Society, they say, “they used their authority over former confederate properties to provide buildings for schools.” The Freedman’s Bureau wanted to make sure that African Americans had a proper education because they were deprived of education while they were growing up. The Virginia Historical Society says, “the Freedman’s Bureau, missionary associations, and African Americans themselves funded the schools; many of the mostly white, female teachers came from the south with the missionary associations.” The Bureau wanted this to be successful and with the help of the missionary associations and the African Americas to fund the schools, it would make it a reality. The Freedman’s Bureau did everything that they could to make sure the African
The Civil war between the north and south was a fight sparked by conflicting ideologies. James McPherson detailed that honor, duty, patriotism and ideology formed the main sustaining motivations for the Civil War, while courage, self-respect and group cohesion kept men going in combat. Along with these McPherson In his book For Cause & Comrades McPherson describes soldiers initial motivations. The differences between the confederate and union soldiers’ motivations were more prominent than they were similar because their underlying goals for the future of America varied when it pertained to human rights.
In a determination to help ex-slaves in 1865, the Legislative body established the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, furthermore known as the Freedmen's Bureau. It provided medical care, assisted with resettlement, food, and it helped establish learning institutes. In excess of one-thousand learning institutes were built, teaching institutions were created for teacher’s training, and many African-American colleges were
Abraham Lincoln won the election of 1860. As a president of the United States, Lincoln’s goal was to keep the Union together. The problem of slavery and the secession by the South are mainly the two issues that lead to the dissolve of the Union, in which Lincoln put all his efforts to deal with during his presidency. “He believes this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. He does not expect the Union to be dissolved; He does not expect the house to fall; but he does expect it will cease to be divided.” Lincoln claimed that it is
With no hope of bringing the South back into the United States by protecting slavery, Lincoln had a new dilemma. His own political party, the Republicans, had formed around their opposition to slavery. Many of the more radical politicians in the party saw the secession of the South as the best opportunity to abolish slavery once and for all. As the US war dead piled up, more and more Northerners began to push Lincoln to punish the states that had seceded by making abolition a major goal of the war. The problem with abolishing slavery, however, was that there were still four slave states that had not seceded from the United States: Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware. Lincoln feared that if he advocated emancipation he would provoke those states into joining the Confederacy, making the war even more difficult to win. Of the border states, Maryland was particularly worrisome, because the US capital at Washington D.C. sat on its border with Virginia. If Maryland decided to join the Confederacy, Washington D.C.
And since they kind of work together, he kept or followed Lincoln's vision or policies. And on May 1865, he finally decided to announce his own plan which was mainly based on loyalty to the Nation and the abolition of Slavery,that Southern States had to accept to be readmitted into the Nation. So many options were proposed. For example, in order to regulate or inhibit the free African-Americans' migration to the Midwest, the Midwestern states adopted black codes. And because of the emergence of the raising of cruality and the fact that so many black code law were adopted by southern states, Southern legislatures decided to pass laws which mainly focused on the restriction of the civil rights of the emancipated former slaves.
Following the end of the civil war, President Lincoln proposed a Reconstruction of the South as a way of bringing them back into the Union. The Reconstruction was Lincoln's effort to reconcile the North and South into and solidify equality in the South. Unfortunately, equal rights would not be established until much later and many Southerners still hated the North. Overall, Reconstruction was a failure because it failed in reconciling the North and South and replaced slavery with an equally cruel and unfair system.
Education has always been valued in the African American community. During slavery freed slaves and those held captive, organized to educate themselves. After emancipation the value of education became even more important to ex-slaves, as it was their emblem of freedom and a means to full participation in American Society (Newby & Tyack, 1971). During this time many schools for African Americans were both founded and maintained by African Americans. African Americans continued to provide education throughout their own communities well into the 1930’s (Green, McIntosh, Cook-Morales, & Robinson-Zanartu, 2005). The atmosphere of these schools resembled a family. The
It was not until during the Civil War that Vincent Colyer, army chaplain, established the first school for freed people on July 23, 1863. Furthermore, in 1896 the United States’ Supreme Court established the “separate but equal” doctrine regarding the education between blacks and whites. This consisted of three main principles. The first stipulated that as long as the state provided education for whites, it must for blacks as well. The second stated that the treatment of black students must be the same as that of the white students. The third demanded that the educational building centers of the whites and blacks must be in the exact same quality. These requirements seem to be an automatic necessity now, yet then it was not. The educational system has changed so much, along with society
In 1861, a horrific war began. Nobody had any idea that this war would become the deadliest war in American history. It wasn’t a regular war, it was a civil war opposing the Union in the North and the Confederate States in the South.. The Civil War cost many people’s lives on the battlefield and beyond. In addition it cost an extreme amount of money for the nation which possibly could have been avoided if the war had turned to happen a little differently.
After the war, the Union needed to effectively bring the South back into the country on equal footing, revive their economy, and rebuild their shattered landscape. Nevertheless, divisions in the federal government over Reconstruction caused a failure to achieve these goals. Lincoln first proposed the 10% plan, which offered a lenient way for Southern States to rejoin the Union. However, once Lincoln was assassinated, Andrew Johnson, a former owner of slaves, became president and initiated his own plan for Reconstruction. Although his plan initially worked, former Confederates eventually worked their way into the government and were elected to the United States Congress. The Republican dominated Congress refused to seat these Southerners. Furthermore, even the Republican Party itself was divided. Moderates and conservatives wanted the South to be readily admitted into the Union and Congress. These Republicans also wanted more reforms than those Johnson was providing. At the same time, radical Republicans wanted drastic change, desiring to "remake the South in the image of the North." These tensions within the Republican Party, and the