Reconstruction

Reconstruction 3 Key Issues to resolve

1. Status of freed slaves (individual rights and equality)

2. Status of Rebellious States (former Confederate States)

3. Rights of Rebellious Leaders (former Confederate Leaders)

Lincoln’s Idea (10% Plan)• To appeal to poorer whites, he offered to pardon all

Confederates• To get former plantation owners, he promised to

protect private property.

• Unlike Radical Republicans in Congress, Lincoln did not want to punish southerners or reorganize southern society.

• His actions showed that he wanted Reconstruction to be a short process in which secessionist states could create new constitutions as fast as possible so that the United States could exist as it had before.

Lincoln believed the solution was to restore "proper practical relations" as quickly and as quietly as possible to the seceded states.

The Wade-Davis Bill• sponsored by senators Benjamin F. Wade and Henry W.

Davis, outlined far more stringent requirements for re-admission to the United States

• President Lincoln applied the Presidential pocket veto of the Wade-Davis bill and continued with his Ten percent Plan.

• By the end of the Civil War the Ten percent Plan had been tried in Virginia, Louisiana, Arkansas and Tennessee.

• Congress, however, refused to seat the Senators and Representatives elected from these 'Ten percent' states.

• Many people in the North were opposed to the Ten percent plan and President Lincoln and Congress had reached a stalemate.

How did Congress respond to Lincoln's Ten percent plan?

• The admission to Congress of Senators and Representatives from 'reconstructed' states would rest with Congress and several states were reconstructed on the Ten percent plan. • There was strong opposition from

Republicans• Then, in July 1864 the Radical Republicans

in Congress, fearful that slavery would continue due to the leniency of the Ten percent Bill, pushed through the Wade-Davis Bill.

Thaddeus Stevens

Andrew Johnson• Then President Lincoln was assassinated by

James Wilkes Booth.• Vice President Andrew Johnson assumed the

presidency. • Johnson lacked the experience, charisma and

patience of Lincoln and immediately became involved in the struggle with Congress regarding the process of Reconstruction. • The people had trusted Abraham Lincoln and,

had he lived, he might have induced the people to accept his Ten percent plan.

Reconstruction after Lincoln• He returned property to white southerners• issued hundreds of pardons to former

Confederate officers and government officials• Weakened the Freedmen’s Bureau by ordering it

to return all confiscated lands to white landowners.

• Johnson also appointed governors to supervise the drafting of new state constitutions and agreed to readmit each state provided it ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery.

Hoping that Reconstruction would be complete by the time Congress resumed a few months later, he declared Reconstruction over at the end of 1865.

The Northern Response• Northerners felt Congress was not being harsh enough toward the

South.• troubled by the presidential • decision to strip the Freedmen’s Bureau of its power• and the fact that blacks were basically slaves again on white plantations.

• Many in the North believed that a president sympathetic to southern racists and secessionists could not correctly reconstruct the South. • As a result, Radical Republicans overwhelmingly beat their

Democratic opponents in the elections of 1866, ending Presidential Reconstruction and starting the era of Radical Reconstruction.

Radical Reconstruction• After the elections of 1866, the Radical Republicans gained almost complete

control over the House of Representatives and the Senate and thus gained enough power to override any potential vetoes by President Andrew Johnson.• Congress began the job of Reconstruction by passing the First Reconstruction

Act in March 1867. • The bill reduced the confederate states to little more than conquered territory,

dividing them into five military districts, each governed by a Union general. • Congress declared martial law in the territories, sending troops to keep the peace and

protect former slaves.• Congress also declared that southern states needed to rewrite their constitutions,

ratify the Fourteenth Amendment, and give the right to vote to blacks in order to get back into the Union.

• They also placed Union troops in charge of voter registration. Congress overrode two presidential vetoes from Johnson to pass their plan.

Reestablishing Order in the South• Radical Republicans hoped that by declaring martial law in the South

they would be able to create a Republican political base in the seceded states to help their plans for Radical Reconstruction. • Though most southern whites hated the ―regimes‖ that Congress

created, they proved successful in speeding up Reconstruction. • Indeed, by 1870 all of the southern states had been readmitted to the

Union.

Johnson’s Impeachment• House Republicans, tired of the presidential

vetoes that blocked their plan for Reconstruction, impeached Johnson by a vote of 126–47 for violating the Tenure of Office Act. • A United States federal law (in force from 1867 to

1887) that was intended to restrict the power of the President of the United States to remove certain office-holders without the approval of the Senate. The law was enacted on March 3, 1867, over the veto of President Andrew Johnson.

• The Senate trial failed to impeach him by one vote - Johnson’s lawyer had successfully argued that Johnson was guilty of no crime indictable in a regular court.

• Thus, the significant precedent set by the acquittal was that only criminal actions - not political disagreements - warranted removal from office.

ReconstructionLincoln’s Plan

• aka “10% Plan” (based on 1860 Election)

• 13th Amendment must be ratified by States

• Allowed Southerners to retain property and regain political rights

Problems: no protection of freedmen’s rights or assistance with inherent hardships

Congressional Plan• aka “Radical Republican Plan”• Goal was to punish South and protect

rights of Freedmen• Established “Freedmen’s Bureau” (over

veto)• Passed Civil Rights Act of 1866 (over

veto)• Reconstruction Act of 1867 (5 military districts in the south)• 14th, 15th Amendments ratified by

states• Banned former Confederate leaders

from serving in Gov’t• Forbid the repayment of Confederate

war debt

Legacy of Reconstruction

• South remained in “3rd World” condition until World War II (1940s)• Animosity remained for generations• Black codes aka “Jim Crow Laws”• KKK (Ku Klux Klan)• Lynching