The Reconstruction
The American Civil War was a huge ordeal that left the country in shambles. With the Confederacy’s surrender, the question arose on what to do with the South and how to reintroduce them to the Union. Lincoln had already begun on a plan, but he was killed before it could be implemented. Since President Lincoln, who had preserved the country, died, how would the United States of America become reconstructed?
Abraham Lincoln's Plan:
Reconstruction brought up questions on whether or not the Confederate states were still a part of the United States and whether Congress or the President should decide on how to fix the South. President Lincoln had always felt that the Confederate states had never actually left the Union. During the war, he had even appointed governors in Louisiana, North Carolina, and Tennessee. His reconstruction plan had already been planned on December 8, 1863. It proposed a pardon to all Southerners who agreed to take an oath of allegiance and loyalty to the Union. Those state governments who got ten percent of the pre-war voters in that state to take the oath and which abolished slavery would receive recognition. In 1864, Louisiana and Arkansas began this process, but Congress did not accept their representatives in the House of Representatives; thus, Lincoln’s Reconstruction idea was discarded. Sadly, Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865 by John Wilkes Booth, a crazed actor and Southern sympathizer.
Andrew Johnson's Plan:
With Lincoln’s assassination, Vice President Andrew Johnson became the President. His plans for reconstruction were actually very similar to Abraham Lincoln’s, although the ten percent rule was taken out and amnesty excluded Southerners with taxable land over $20,000, due to the fact that Johnson resented wealthy white slave owners. He felt that they had caused the South to secede in the first place. Lincoln had already set up loyal governments in Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Virginia, and Johnson decided to recognize them. States that had participated in the rebellion began to take the steps to be recognized by the Union. The last state, Texas, decided to pledge loyalty on April 6, 1866. Johnson told Congress on December 6, 1866 that the Union was now restored.
Civil Rights
After the war the thirteenth amendment, which abolished slavery, was added to the Constitution. The problem was that the free blacks did not know what to do and how to blend into society; therefore, the Freedmen’s Bureau was created on February 19, 1866 to protect the free African Americans from the Black Codes, which helped the South hang on to slavery, and to help them acculturate into white American society. On April 9, the Civil Rights Act was passed, and it gave citizenship to African Americans. Since there was controversy over whether this act was constitutional or not, the Joint Committee put it in the Constitution as the fourteenth amendment. Now, the requirements to be readmitted to the Union were ratification of the new amendment and permission of African American suffrage. Soon after, ratification of the fifteenth amendment, which allowed blacks to vote, became necessary, as well. Civil rights became a large part of Reconstruction because the North wanted to end slavery while the South struggled to hold on to it.