Section 1-Reconstruction Plans Click the Speaker button to listen to the audio again

Section 1-Reconstruction Plans

Section 1-Reconstruction Plans

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I can Contrast Lincoln’s plan to reunite the nation with that of the Radical Republicans.

I can discuss life in the South immediately after the war.

Why It MattersThe nation faced difficult problems after the Civil War. The first issue was how to bring the South back into the Union. Lincoln had wanted to make reunion relatively easy. After he died, Congress designed a plan that focused on punishing the South and ensuring that African Americans had the right to vote. These policies increased hostility between the regions. Pressures on the South to reform eased with the Compromise of 1877.

The Impact TodayThe Reconstruction era has permanently affected American society.

• The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments provide constitutional protections for all Americans.

• The Radical Republicans’ rule so antagonized the South that the region remained solidly Democratic for nearly a century.

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continued on next slide



The Reconstruction Battle Begins


• Union troops and cannons had devastated most Southern cities and the South’s economy.

• The president and Congress had to deal with Reconstruction, or rebuilding the South after the Civil War.

• They also had to decide under what terms and conditions the former Confederate states would rejoin the Union.

(pages 386–389)(pages 386–389)

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• President Lincoln’s Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction called for a general amnesty, or pardon, to all Southerners who took an oath of loyalty to the United States and accepted the Union’s proclamations concerning slavery.

• After ten percent of the state’s voters in the 1864 presidential election had taken the oath, the state could organize a new state government.

(pages 386–389)(pages 386–389)

The Reconstruction Battle Begins (cont.)


• The Radical Republicans in Congress, led by Representative Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania and Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, did not want to reconcile with the South.

• The Radical Republicans had three main goals. • They wanted to prevent the Confederate leaders

from returning to power after the war.

(pages 386–389)(pages 386–389)



• They wanted the Republican Party to become powerful in the South.

• They wanted the federal government to help African Americans achieve political equality by guaranteeing them the right to vote in the South.

• Moderate Republicans thought Lincoln’s plan was too lenient on the South and the Radical Republicans’ plan was too harsh.

(pages 386–389)(pages 386–389)



• By the summer of 1864, the moderates and the radicals came up with a plan that they both could support.

• The Wade-Davis Bill was introduced and passed in Congress.

• Lincoln thought the plan was too harsh, so he blocked the bill with a pocket veto.

• He did this by letting the session of Congress expire without signing the bill.

(pages 386–389)(pages 386–389)



The Freedmen’s Bureau

• Thousands of freed African Americans, known as freedmen, had followed General Sherman and his troops as they marched through Georgia and South Carolina.

• To help the freed people get food, Sherman set them up on plantation land along the South Carolina coast.

(pages 389)(pages 389)


• As a result of the refugee crisis, Congress established the Freedmen’s Bureau.

• The Bureau was to feed and clothe war refugees in the South using army surplus supplies.

• It also helped freedmen find work and negotiated pay and hours worked on plantations.

The Freedmen’s Bureau (cont.)



• The Freedmen’s Bureau made a lasting contribution in education.

• The Bureau provided schools, paid teachers, and helped establish colleges for training African American teachers.




• Many freed African Americans served in the U.S. Cavalry after 1866; most were stationed in the southwestern United States and were called “buffalo soldiers”.



Documents

Section 1-Reconstruction Plans Click the Speaker button to listen to the audio again