The Wade-Davis bill, questioned Lincoln in his ideas that the southern states needed to return to the Union, because for Lincoln, the Constitution did not give permission to the southern states to separate. Lincoln was also accused of being very gentle with the rebel states, in order to win voters in the South, and because he wanted his political ideas to spread throughout the south. Rep. Henry Winter Davis, said Lincoln would use Reconstruction to use Southern voters in their own ambitions, and gain control of the Congress. Even so, Lincoln vetoed the Wade-Davis Bill and signed his Ten-Percent Plan, despite claims that the president should only obey and execute, not make his own laws.
To prepare for and during the war factories in the U.S. were changed from civilian to war production. Men had historically been the main source of workers for these factories but a solution had to be found to cope for the losses of men fighting overseas. Women were brought into the factories from their stay-at-home jobs and America saw some of its highest production rates in history. Factories had been converted from producing normal household goods to equipment necessary for the war effort such as planes, ships, and munitions. Americans throughout the nation began portioning smaller amounts of their food and buying fewer unnecessary goods.
