The Civil War was at most one of the darkest hours in United States history. Bloodshed and loss quaked the land of our forefathers in a way we could not imagine. In the wake of the battles, the Union forces found new hope in their victories and came out on top in the victory of the war. In the hope to reconstruct the United States Abraham Lincoln proceeded with the new idea of reconstruction. The main idea was to give the freed slaves more rights and try to condone for the sins of the past and present. This was a short-lived initial plan, as the hopes and plans changed when Andrew Johnson took to presidency. His views of reconstruction conflicted towards the reconstruction, and the plan soon was updated to fit the new president’s beliefs. The
Reconstruction was the time period following the Civil War, which lasted from 1865 to 1877, in which the United States began to rebuild. The term can also refer to the process the federal government used to readmit the defeated Confederate states to the Union. While all aspects of Reconstruction were not successful, the main goal of the time period was carried out, making Reconstruction over all successful. During this time, the Confederate states were readmitted to the Union, the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments were ratified, and African Americans were freed from slavery and able to start new lives.
The South won in Reconstruction in many ways. Rebuilding the South was one of its major focuses. Several canals, bridges, and railroads were rebuilt with Reconstruction funds. The Republicans in Congress agreed with southern legislatures on how important business was. For this, a large amount of money was gathered to help the South’s reconstruction. Even though slavery was abolished with the passing of the 13th Amendment, it still existed in the South in the forms of “Black Codes” and cults like the Ku Klux Klan. In conclusion, Lincoln won the war for the North, but President Johnson won Reconstruction for the South by allowing them to create their own laws to keep the former slaves down and keeping their Southern lifestyles.
The first conflict with reconstruction was how to bring the seceded states back into the Union. While many Republicans wanted to blame President Johnson for the delay of Reconstruction, there was trouble and disagreement within the party before President Johnson was sworn into the Presidency. Lincoln, at the conclusion of the Civil War, wanted it to be simple for the Confederate States to rejoin the Union. For example, Lincoln proposed that the seceded states should be allotted the right to establish a state government if ten percent of the state’s voters in the election of 1860 took an oath of allegiance to the Union. The radical Republicans felt that Lincoln’s plan was far to gentl...
In 1863, two years prior to the end of the Civil War, the Era of Reconstruction of the United States had begun. This period of reconstruction was a time of chaos and disorder uprooted from the strong resentment against white Southerners that postwar plans had created. Reconstruction plans of Abraham Lincoln, Radical Republicans in Congress, and Andrew Johnson were very diverse and contained many distinct differences. Passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, which banned slavery, established the rights of African Americans, and defined the basis by which Southern states could rejoin the Union, inflamed this strong sense of anger and resentment. The actions of the Radical Republicans, especially, led to many changes in the South. Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner, leaders of this zealous antislavery advocate group, held many motives which they hoped would lead them to possess power by taking advantage of South through any way possible.
Many people had different views and ideas about Reconstruction. There was much debate about how the Confederate states, which included Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia, should be readmitted into the Union. Some people believed that the states should be treated as territories, and others believed that the southern leaders should be punished instead of the states. Still, others believed that the South still belonged to the Union because secession was illegal. During the Civil War, on December 1863, President Lincoln announced his 10 % Plan for Reconstruction. Many Northerners considered it to be too mild, but the blacks condemned it for ignoring saying nothing about civil rights fir the freedmen and ignoring black suffrage. Lincoln’s plan was never carried out because he was assassinated less than one week after the Civil War. However, while Lincoln was president, a national debate developed over whether Congress or the President should establish the Reconstruction policy.
In the book The Reconstruction there were three main ideas that the North wanted to address during the reconstruction after the disaster caused by the Civil War. The first act brought to motion was the restoration of the Union in which Abraham Lincoln created the Ten-Percent Plan. The Ten-Percent Plan meant that each Southern state would be each allowed back to the Union only after 10 percent of the voting population pledged their future loyalty to the United States, also all Confederates excluding high-ranking government and military officials would be forgiven although Radical Republicans wanted it to be 50 percent of the voting population to pledge loyalty to the United States. President Lincoln and Andrew Jackson as well as congress agreed that the Southern states had to get rid of all slavery in their new st...
After the Civil War, the Radical Republicans had a different view from that of President Andrew Johnson with respect to Reconstruction. Just like Abraham Lincoln, his predecessor who lived barely a year into the Reconstruction before he was assassinated, President Johnson was of the idea that a more lenient and conciliatory approach should be taken in the South which had faced a lot of damage due to the civil war. On the other hand, Radical Republicans were against both Lincoln’s and Johnson’s approaches and policies on reconstruction as they were too lenient. The Radical Republicans approach was more strict and firmer because it wanted the Federal government to exert more control of the South during Reconstruction by ensuring the protection
The thesis “The New View of Reconstruction”, Eric Foner reviews the constantly changing view on the subject of the Reconstruction. The postwar Reconstruction period has been viewed in many different lights throughout history but one fact remains true, that it was one of the most “violent, dramatic and controversial” times in US’s history (224). In the beginning of his thesis, Eric Foner talks about the way the Reconstruction was though as before the 1960 as a period of intense, corruption and manipulation of the freedman. After mentioning the old way of thinking before the 1960’s, Eric Foner reveals the reason for this train of thought, the ignored testimonials of the black freedman.
Following Lincoln’s tragic assassination, President Andrew Johnson took on the accountability of making Reconstruction a reality. Andrew Johnson wanted to use Lincoln’s ideas of reconstruction but in a modified form. Since Congress would be in recess for eight more months Johnson decided to go ahead with his plan. Johnson's goal in reconstruction was to grant amnesty to all former Confederates (except high officials), the ordinances of secession were to be revoked, Confederate debts would repudiate, and the states had to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment. Once the states swore to a loyalty oath to abide by the conditions they would be allowed to return to the Union. After swearing to the oath Confederate States would be allowed to govern themselves. With this power the states implemented the creation of a system of black codes that restricted the actions of freed slaves in much the same way, if not exactly the same way, that slaves were restricted under the old law. The end result of his plan was a hopeless conflict with the Radical Republicans who dominated Congress, passed measures over Johnson's vetoes, and attempted to limit the power of the executive concerning appointments and removals.
... The cause was forfeited not by Republicans, who welcomed the African-American votes, but to the elite North who had concluded that the formal end of slavery was all the freed man needed and their unpreparedness for the ex-slaves to participate in the Southern commonwealth was evident. Racism, severe economic depression, an exhausted North and troubled South, and a campaign of organized violence toward the freed man, overturned Reconstruction. The North withdrew the last of the federal troops with the passing of The Compromise of 1877. The freed slaves continued to practice few voting rights until 1890, but they were soon stripped of all political, social and economic powers. Not until the civil rights movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s were the freedoms that were fought for by our Republican forefathers nearly 100 years before, finally seen through to fruition.
After the Civil War ended in 1865, it was followed by an era known as Reconstruction that lasted until 1877, with the goal to rebuild the nation. Lincoln was the president at the beginning of this era, until his assassination caused his vice president, Andrew Johnson to take his place in 1865. Johnson was faced with numerous issues such as the reunification of the union and the unknown status of the ex-slaves, while compromising between the principles of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. After the Election of 1868, Ulysses S. Grant, a former war hero with no political experience, became the nation’s new president, but was involved in numerous acts of corruption. Reconstruction successfully reintegrated the southern states into the Union through Lincoln and Johnson’s Reconstruction Plans, but was mostly a failure due to the continued discriminatory policies against African Americans, such as the Black Codes, Jim Crow laws, and sharecropping, as well as the widespread corruption of the elite in the North and the Panic of 1873,
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...
...e, Brian. "A Wartime Alliance." White Hunters: The Golden Age of African Safaris. New York: H. Holt, 1999. 167-73. Print.
Amid the post Civil War chaos, various political groups were scrambling to further their agendas. First, Southern Democrats, a party comprised of leaders of the confederacy and other wealthy Southern whites, sought to end what they perceived as Northern domination of the South. They also sought to institute Black Codes, by limiting the rights of Blacks to move, vote, travel, and change jobs,3 which like slavery, would provide an adequate and cheap labor supply for plantations. Second, Moderate Republicans wanted to pursue a policy of reconciliation between North and South, but at the same time ensure slavery was abolished.