Lincoln’s View of Reconstruction
LincolnAs early as 1863 president Lincoln began to think about reconstruction and offered a plan to allow states to begin to return to the Union in exchange for relatively mild concessions. Following Union victories at Gettysburg, Vicksburg and Chattanooga, Lincoln hoped that at least some Confederate states might see the handwriting on the wall and be willing to rejoin the Union if generous terms were offered. Thus in December 1863 Lincoln issued a Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, which stated that those states where 10% of the 1860 electorate would take an oath of loyalty to the Union and agree to emancipation might be readmitted.
Congress refused to recognize Lincoln's plan and countered with the Wade-Davis Bill, a much harsher approach, which the president vetoed with a “pocket veto.” (Note: A pocket veto occurs when a bill is sent to the president, who does not sign it, but Congress adjourns within the 10-day period allowed for the president to return the bill.) Lincoln did not back off from his intention to treat the South generously. In his famous Second Inaugural Address, which is inscribed on the wall of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, he closed with the words:
With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan...to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
Following Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, President Lincoln again outlined a generous plan for reconstruction. Sadly, the President did not live to see his ideas realized. On April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to Ford’s theater to attend to play with his wife. John Wilkes Booth, a Virginia actor enraged by the South’s defeat, made his way to the presidential box and shot the president in the head. Lincoln was carried across the street and placed in a bedroom, where he died the next morning. Lincoln’s assassination dealt a fatal blow to hopes for a more lenient reconstruction effort than what actually occurred. His death also had a chilling effect on potential sympathy for the South. Regarding Lincoln Winston Churchill wrote:
Others might try to emulate his magnanimity; none but he could control the bitter political hatreds which were rife. on the right track. That assessment, however, would soon change radically. The next phase of Reconstruction began when Congress came back into session late in 1865.
a. johnsonReconstruction for all practical purposes took place entirely within the South. Restoring the Confederate states to their former positions as part of the Union was a difficult process, and it was not completed successfully for a number of reasons. For most of the modern
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