Reconstruction Acts in General In December 1863, President Lincoln announced his plan for Reconstruction. Now it was 1865 and it was finally starting. After the war ended, many things had happened that would make America somewhat what it is today. Now this plan, it called for freedom from punishment for every Southerner under one condition. Lincoln proposed that if 10 percent of a state's voters took the oath to join the union, the state could form a new government and new constitution, and the state's new constitution had to prohibit slavery. Many had thought that his plan was too moderate, and it slowed down the process of establishing the Reconstruction Act. Later after Lincoln passed away, Lyndon B. Johnson took the President’s place and …show more content…
Many of the southerners then went toward his plan since they thought it could help them get more resources, and invented the black codes. Because the South happily took advantage of his arrangement, many Radicals of the Congress found it very devastating and planned on making their own Reconstruction Act. There were many Moderates as well, and they were the ones who controlled the party. They thought that Johnson was right when it came to the choice of whether they would include the Negros’ opinions on what the laws would be, yet they agreed that with the Radicals that African Americans should have the right to put a little bit of insight on the constitution and government. This determined that it should be upon the Congress to see if the Reconstruction Act was rational, not President Johnson. So first in 1866, the Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, which guaranteed the rights of former slaves. Johnson then vetoed the act since he opposed the federal protection of the former slaves. The congress then repassed the act, making it the first major law that has been approved over the President’s …show more content…
It also declared the outline of readmission to the Union by registering voters who were authorized white and black men to hold a convention to make a new government and constitution with opinions from all men, whatever race. The voters would then elect state legislature and a governor, and they’d endorse the 14th amendment. Johnson had also vetoed this act and the Congress repassed it again. As this pattern continued, the impeachment of Johnson had come from a trial called the Tenure Office Act. To test his authority, they prohibited the Head Executive to fire any members of the cabinet or other officials without the Senate’s permission. Johnson believed that the measure was unconstitutional and in February 1868, he dismissed the Secretary of War. Because his act violated the Tenure Office Act, he was later removed from the office. The Congress then proposed the 15th amendment, which made it illegal for anyone to be dismissed from voting because of their color, race, or ethnicity. By 1870, all amendments were ratified and all states were readmitted. From then on, things slowly went downhill. Even though there was peace in most issues, -especially transportation in Texas from railroads and other movements-, the economy and the
After the Civil War, America went through a period of Reconstruction. This was when former Confederate states were readmitted to the Union. Lincoln had a plan that would allow them to come back, but they wouldn’t be able to do it easily. He would make 10% of the population swear an oath of loyalty and establish a government to be recognized. However, he was assassinated in Ford’s Theater and Andrew Johnson became the president; Johnson provided an easy path for Southerners. Congress did their best to ensure equal rights to freedmen, but failed because of groups who were against Reconstruction, white southern Democrats gaining control within the government and the lack of having a plan in place for recently freedmen.
“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
Although Lincoln and Johnson both passed Reconstruction plans that helped reunite the north and the south, ultimately Congress was not satisfied and passed its own plan. Lincoln passed a rather forgiving Reconstruction plan because in his opinion, the Confederate states had never seceded from the Union. The Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction included a ten percent plan, which “ would recognize them as people of the states within which they acted, and aid them to gain in all respects full acknowledgement and enjoyment of statehood, even though the persons who thus acted were but a tenth part of the original voters of their states” (W...
As soon as Johnson was made president he began to disagree with Congress, particularly those Congressional members of his opposing party. Later, he even broke ties with his own party citing the fact that he wouldn’t endorse a new amendment to the Constitution granting blacks the rights of citizenship. Congress did not approve of President Johnson’s plans for Reconstruction. The Wade Davis Plan returned power to the same people who had tried to break the Union by granting them amnesty. The Congress mainly opposed this plan because it contained no provision to protect the free slaves. The Freedman’s Bureau Act was intended to help former slaves to shift from slavery to emancipation and assured them equality before law.
President Johnson tried to enforce Lincoln’s Ten Percent Plan. That as soon as ten percent of the population of any southern state took an oath of loyalty to the union and adopted a constitution that abolished slavery they would be readmitted to the union. The radical republicans in congress totally disagreed with Johnson. Many of the southern states in 1865 under presidential reconstruction adopted what was known as black codes. These codes restricted blacks from any participation in the rights of citizenship. Blacks were confined to an inferior position, they were not legally slaves anymore, but they had no rights of citizenship.
...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”
The reconstruction of the Union began under President Lincoln before the end of the war, and carried on by President Johnson after the assassination of President Lincoln. After Lincoln’s death, the leadership of the nation bestowed upon Andrew Johnson of Tennessee. According to A. Brinkley (pg. 375), Johnson revealed his plan for reconstruction or “Restoration”, as he preferred to call it, soon after he took office and implemented it during the summer of 1865 when Congress was in recess. Like Lincoln, he offered some form of amnesty to Southerners who would take a pledge of loyalty to the Union. In most other respect, however, his plan resembled the Wade-Davis Bill. The next phase of reconstruction, known as the Congressional Plan or "Radical" modernization had begun, which undid everything started by Presidents Lincoln and Johnson. These radicals, mostly republicans, motivated by three main factors revenge, concern for the freedmen, and political concerns. The Radicals in Congress pushed through a number of measures designed to assist the freedmen, but also demonstrate the supremacy of Congress over the president. These events included the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the 14th Amendment, the Tenure of Office Act, and the Army Appropriations Act. The Radical Republicans prepared an effort in Congress to impeach the president Johnson as a payback for resisting their platforms. The vote in the Senate was 35-19 for conviction, one vote short of the necessary two-thirds. This was in turn to a few Republicans that had crossed over and voted with the Democrats, thus refuting the ultimate retaliation to the Radicals. If the removal of President Johnson had gone thru, it might have permanently weakened the executive branch. Congr...
The 15th Amendment states that “The right of the citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude”. This gave African Americans the right to vote. The amendment seemed to signify the fulfillment of all promises to African Americans. The 15th Amendment is also categorized as one of the three constitutional amendments. In the beginning thirty-seven states ratified the 15th Amendment. The first of these states to ratify the 15th Amendment was Nevada. To disenfranchise African Americans, devices were written into the constitutions of former confederate states. In 1869, when the New Year began, the republicans were anxious to introduce a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the black man’s right to vote. Congress considered the amendment that was proposed for two months. When congress approved a compromise, the amendment did not specifically mention the black man. The struggle for and against ratification hung on what blacks and other political interests would do. The Republican-dominated Congress passed the First Reconstruction Act. This act divided the South into five military districts and outlining how ...
One of the first goals of Reconstruction was to readmit the Confederate states into the Union, and during the debate in Congress over how to readmit the states, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments were ratified. The United States had three different presidents between 1865 and 1877, who all had different opinions as to how the actions of readmitting the states should be carried out. President Lincoln devised the Ten Percent Plan in an effort to get the Confederate states to rejoin the Union. In Lincoln's plan, all Confederates, other than high-ranking officials, would be pardoned if they would swear allegiance to the Union and promise to obey its laws. Once ten percent of the people on the 1860 voting lists took the oath of allegiance, the state would be free to form a state government, and would be readmitted to the Union. Many of the Republicans in Congress were angered by this plan, because they believed that it was too lenient. After President Lincoln was assassinated, Andrew Johnson assumed the presidency with a new plan, which became known as Presiden...
As a result of the failure of Johnson's Reconstruction, Congress proposed its own plan. The 14th amendment was one of the many things implemented under this plan. Among other things, this amendment forbade ex-Confederate leaders from holding political office, and gave freedmen their citizenship. The Southern rejection of this amendment, largely as a result of the actions of their former Confederate leaders then in state office, paved the way for the Reconstruction Act of 1867. This dismantled all Southern governments and established military control over the South.
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...
After the Civil War, the South needed to rejoin the North to become a United States. President Abraham Lincoln was very lenient with the idea of restoring the states with the Union. He developed a plan called the Ten-Percent Plan, which proclaimed that ten percent of the southern states’ population needed to pledge to be loyal to the United States. After Lincoln’s assassination, President Andrew Johnson took over. He was much more lenient towards the South than Lincoln was, giving the South the right to regulate their actions. For example, African Americans could be controlled, but still couldn’t be bought nor sold. Slavery technically ended, but the new sharecropper sy...
President Lincoln passed the Emancipation Proclamation which ended slavery in rebel states and created the Freedman’s Bureau. Unlike President Lincoln, President Andrew Johnson passed several laws supporting slavery and racism and even vetoed laws he disagreed with. For example, Johnson vetoed the Freedman’s Bureau because he believed colored people had less rights than white people. Additionally, he passed the Black Codes that limited the promised rights of African Americans. According to the Black Codes it states, “All persons of color signing contracts of labor shall be known as servants and their employers shall be known as masters.” However, that is exactly slavery yet the term “slaves” is replaced with “servants.” President Johnson even firmly believed that politics were made for and only white people. Thankfully, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, nullifying the Black Codes and simultaneously giving equal rights to all except for women and Native Americans. Johnson then vetoed the act stating it was “...an invasion of
The fifteenth amendment was proposed to congress on February 26, 1869 and was ratified a year later. After the Civil war, the confederate states were forced to ratify the reconstruction amendments in order to be reinstated into the union.3 Charles Sumner, an advocate for equal rights, refused to vote as he believed that the amendment did not take necessary steps to prevent the development of various state laws that could disenfranchise black voters.4 Sumner was correct, by the 1890s many states had adopted legislature designed to keep blacks from voting. The Poll Taxes and Literacy Tests may be the most emblematic legislation of the period. These laws were passed in order to ke...
He came up with a favorable reconstruction policy for the South that had been defeated (Fuentes‐Rohwer 63). All ex-Confederates were given total amnesty, restoration of the status of the US states that had seceded. The Southern governments that were new had to be approved provided they had legislated black codes which were supportive of the preservation of slavery. Republicans fully rejected the ideas of Johnson and instead came up with radical reconstruction. They continuously overrode the vetoes by the president. The radical reconstruction held that the southern governments had no option but to give way to military rule. Furthermore, the African Americans were not denied their right to vote which was their constitutional entitlement. In March the year 1867, the congress worked round the clock to do everything it could so as to weaken the powers of Johnson. The congress enacted the Tenure of Office Act that weakened the veto of Johnson. He could not remove office bearers of federal offices including cabinet secretaries provided they had been endorsed by the senate (Fuentes‐Rohwer 66). When removing them, the president had to liaise with the