Reconstruction Essay, Research Paper

In 1864 the radical republicans controlling congress passed the Wade-Davis Bill. The bill provided for the appointment of provisional military governors in the seceded states, and require each state to abolish slavery, renounce secession, and disqualify Confederate officials from voting or holding office. The Wade-Davis Bill also said that any amnesties granted to the south would originate with congress, not the president. Lincoln, favoring a more liberal resolution, vetoed this bill setting the stage for a congressional executive battle over Reconstruction. But due to the assassination of Lincoln vice president Andrew Johnson was forced to fight this battle.

Andrew Johnson, upon taking the oath of office as president, was also faced with how to restructure the south. At first he followed Lincoln’s so-called Ten Percent Plan which was conceived during the war in 1863. The plan sought to persuade the seceded southern states to come back to the Union as easy as possible. It called for ten percent of the voters from former confederate states to take an oath of allegiance to the Union. Then a constitutional convention would be called and the states government reorganized. Johnson, after future consideration, feared the plan was too lenient and the former slave holders would once again gain power in the south so he came up with a plan of his own.

Johnson’s plan called for general amnesty except for southerners who had property worth $20,000 or more. Southern states also had to repeal succession acts, repudiate war debts, and ratify the 13th amendment. Johnson wanted all southern states to form working state governments by the end of 1865, before congress came back into session, hoping to avoid further confrontation with the radical republicans. All former confederate states succeeded in this except Texas. Once all the southern states had a working government all congress had to do was accept that reconstruction was an accomplished feat.

Congress did not agree and they refused to seat any members from the eleven former confederate states. But after much debate congress did adopt the idea of “forfeited rights” in defining the position of former confederate states. Congress said that the states had continued to exist after succession from the Union and had forfeited “all civil and political rights under the constitution.” In 1867 congress passed a series of reconstruction acts that called former confederate states “conquered nations.” The ten “conquered nations” were divided in five military districts each under the authority of a military governor. After a majority of voters took an oath of loyalty a constitutional convention could be called. All states had to ratify the 14th amendment and state constitutions were required to accept the abolition of slavery. Also ranking military confederates could not vote or hold office. The newly created state governments were generally republican and were governed by political alliances of the newly freed blacks, carpet baggers, and scalawags.

The new governments of the former confederate states were seen by most southern whites as artificial creations forced on them from the outside, and the conservative element in the south remained hostile to them. Some Yankees were welcome such as doctors, teachers, engineers, and investors but for the most part the south regarded the northerners as a plague of locusts feeding on an already devastated piece of land. The radical republicans, believing that once the army left the Ku Klux Klan would keep blacks from voting, passed the 15th amendment in 1869 assuring the freedman’s right to vote. The passing of the 15th amendment was thought to be the solution to the problems in the south. But congress would later find out that little of what the military had done would cure the prejudice of the south. Radical Reconstruction ended up producing as much, if not more, hatred in the south then the war itself. In the end the freed blacks were left to fend for themselves.