Reconstruction era of the United States . Three amendments to the Constitution affected the entire nation. In the different states, Reconstruction began and ended at different times; federal Reconstruction policies were finally abandoned with the Compromise of 1. Reconstruction policies were implemented when a Confederate state came under the control of the Union Army. Find out more about the history of Reconstruction, including videos. Under the administration of President Andrew Johnson in 1865 and. Johnson's first Reconstruction actions were two. Congress Reacts to Johnson's Reconstruction Plan. Congress, especially a group called the Radical. Grant was elected President and supported Congress' Reconstruction plans. President Abraham Lincoln set up reconstructed governments in several southern states during the war, including Tennessee, Arkansas and Louisiana, and experimented with giving land to ex- slaves in South Carolina. President Andrew Johnson continued Lincoln's lenient plans despite the widespread bitterness over Lincoln's assassination. Republicans in Congress refused to accept Johnson's lenient terms, rejected the new members of Congress selected by the South, and in 1. A sweeping Republican victory in the 1. Congressional elections in the North gave the Radical Republicans enough control of Congress that they over- rode Johnson's vetoes and began what is called . The army then conducted new elections in which the freed slaves could vote while those who held leading positions under the Confederacy were denied the vote and could not run for office. Conservative opponents charged that Republican regimes were marred by widespread corruption. Violent opposition emerged in numerous localities under the name of the Ku Klux Klan, which led to federal intervention by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1. 87. 0 that closed down the Klan. Conservative Democrats calling themselves . A deep national economic depression following the Panic of 1. Democratic gains in the North, the collapse of many railroad schemes in the South, and a growing sense of frustration in the North. With the Compromise of 1. Army intervention in the South ceased and Republican control collapsed in the last three state governments in the South. This was followed by a period that white Southerners labeled Redemption, which saw the enactment of Jim Crow laws and (after 1. The Democratic Party dominated the . Violent controversy erupted throughout the South over these issues. By the 1. 87. 0s, Reconstruction had officially provided Freedmen with equal rights under the law, and they were voting and taking political office. They also disrupted organizing and terrorized blacks to bar them from the polls. Many leaders had been Whigs and were committed to modernization. These Reconstruction Amendments established the rights which, through extensive litigation, led to Supreme Court rulings starting in the early 2. Moderates said this could be easily accomplished as soon as Confederate armies surrendered and the Southern states repealed secession and accepted the 1. Amendment — most of which happened by December 1. Lincoln formally began Reconstruction in late 1. Ten percent plan, which went into operation in several states but which Radicals opposed. Lincoln vetoed the Radical plan, the Wade–Davis Bill of 1. Ten- Percent Plan. Congressman Thaddeus Stevens and Senator Charles Sumner led the Radical Republicans. Sumner argued that secession had destroyed statehood alone but the Constitution still extended its authority and its protection over individuals, as in the territories. Thaddeus Stevens and his followers viewed secession as having left the states in a status like new territories. The Republicans sought to prevent Southern politicians from . Since slavery was abolished, the three- fifths compromise no longer applied to counting the population of blacks. Reconstruction era of the United States. President Johnson ordered that confiscated or abandoned lands administered by the. Radical Republican Reconstruction Plan. Andrew Johnson Reconstruction Plan; Site Links. President Johnson stood in opposition. He vetoed the Freedmen's Bureau Bill, claiming that it would bloat the size of government. He vetoed the Civil Rights Bill rejecting. Presidential Reconstruction. Radical Reconstruction. President Johnson embarked on a “swing around the circle” tour where he gave speeches at various Midwestern cities to. You just finished Presidential and Congressional Reconstruction Plans. After the 1. 87. 0 census, the South would gain numerous additional representatives in Congress, based on the population of freedmen. Johnson rejected the Radical program of harsh, lengthy Reconstruction and instead appointed his own governors and tried to finish reconstruction by the end of 1. By early 1. 86. 6, full- scale political warfare existed between Johnson (now allied with the Democrats) and the Radicals; he vetoed laws and issued orders that contradicted Congressional legislation. Congress decided it had the primary authority to decide how Reconstruction should proceed, because the Constitution stated the United States had to guarantee each state a republican form of government. The Radicals insisted that meant Congress decided how Reconstruction should be achieved. The issues were multiple: who should decide, Congress or the president? How should republicanism operate in the South? What was the status of the Confederate states? What was the citizenship status of men who had supported the Confederacy? What was the citizenship and suffrage status of freedmen? They moved to impeach Johnson because of his constant attempts to thwart radical Reconstruction measures, by using the Tenure of Office Act. Johnson was acquitted by one vote, but he lost the influence to shape Reconstruction policy. While Congress temporarily suspended the ability to vote of approximately 1. Confederate officials or senior officers, constitutional amendments gave full citizenship and suffrage to former slaves. While many slaves were illiterate, educated blacks (including escaped slaves) moved down from the North to aid them, and natural leaders also stepped forward. They elected white and black men to represent them in constitutional conventions. A Republican coalition of freedmen, southerners supportive of the Union (derisively called scalawags by white Democrats), and northerners who had migrated to the South (derisively called carpetbaggers—some of whom were returning natives, but were mostly Union veterans), organized to create constitutional conventions. They created new state constitutions to set new directions for southern states. The bill required voters to take the . Pursuing a policy of . Suffrage for former Confederates was one of two main concerns. A decision needed to be made whether to allow just some or all former Confederates to vote (and to hold office). The moderates wanted virtually all of them to vote, but the Radicals resisted. They repeatedly tried to impose the ironclad oath, which would effectively have allowed no former Confederates to vote. Representative Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania proposed, unsuccessfully, that all former Confederates lose the right to vote for five years. The compromise that was reached disenfranchised many former Confederate civil and military leaders. No one knows how many temporarily lost the vote, but one estimate was 1. The issue was how to receive the four- million former slaves as citizens. If they were to be fully counted as citizens, some sort of representation for apportionment of seats in Congress had to be determined. Before the war, the population of slaves had been counted as three- fifths of a comparable number of free whites. By now having the benefit of four million freedmen counted as full citizens, the South would gain additional seats in Congress. If blacks were denied the vote and the right to hold office, then only whites would represent them. Many conservatives, including most white southerners, northern Democrats, and some northern Republicans, opposed black voting. Some northern states that had referendums on the subject limited the ability of their own small populations of blacks to vote. Johnson also believed that such service should be rewarded with citizenship. Lincoln proposed giving the vote to . Sumner preferred at first impartial requirements that would have imposed literacy restrictions on blacks and whites. He believed, however, that he would not succeed in passing legislation to disfranchise illiterate whites who already had the vote. In 1. 88. 0, for example, the white illiteracy rate was about 2. Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, South Carolina, and Georgia; and as high as 3. North Carolina. This compares with the 9% national rate and a black rate of illiteracy that was over 7. South. We put the musket in his hands because it was necessary; for the same reason we must give him the franchise. They passed laws allowing all male freedmen to vote. In 1. 86. 7, black men voted for the first time. Over the course of Reconstruction, more than 1,5. African Americans held public office in the South. They did not hold office in numbers representative of their proportion in the population, but often elected whites to represent them. However, these laws had only had limited effects; were not funded by Congress; or entirely enforced by Attorney General Edward Bates. On July 2. 2, he wrote a first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation that freed the slaves in states in rebellion. Then on September 2. George Mc. Clellan defeated Robert E. Lee at Antietam, and the second draft of the Emancipation Proclamation was issued to the public the following day. Many of these freedmen joined the Union army and fought in battles against the Confederate forces. Lincoln pocket- vetoed the bill and the rift widened between the moderates, who wanted to save the Union and win the war, and the Radicals, who wanted to effect a more complete change within Southern society. It attempted to oversee new relations between freedmen and their former masters. The Act, without deference to a person's color, authorized confiscated land to be leased for a period of three years and the ability to purchase the land no more than 4. A popular myth was that the Act offered 4. Vice President Andrew Johnson had taken a hard line and spoke of hanging rebel Confederates, but when he succeeded Lincoln as President, Johnson took a much softer line, pardoning many Confederate leaders and former Confederates. There were no treason trials. Only one person—Captain Henry Wirz, the commandant of the prison camp in Andersonville, Georgia—was executed for war crimes. The defeated were unwilling to acknowledge that their society had changed. In the words of Benjamin F. Perry, President Johnson's choice as the provisional governor of South Carolina: . President Johnson ordered that confiscated or abandoned lands administered by the Freedman's Bureau would not be redistributed to the freedmen but be returned to pardoned owners. Reconstruction: Johnson's Plan. Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson, at first pleased the radicals by publicly attacking the planter aristocracy and insisting that the rebellion must be punished. His amnesty proclamation (May 2. Lincoln's; it disenfranchised all former military and civil officers of the Confederacy and all those who owned property worth $2. The obvious intent was to shift political control in the South from the old planter aristocracy to the small farmers and artisans, and it promised to accomplish a revolution in Southern society. With Congress in adjournment from April to Dec., 1. Johnson put his plan into operation. Under provisional governors appointed by him, the Southern states held conventions that voided or repealed their ordinances of secession, abolished slavery, and (except South Carolina) repudiated Confederate debts. Their newly elected legislatures (except Mississippi) ratified the Thirteenth Amendment guaranteeing freedom for blacks. By the end of 1. 86. Confederate state except Texas had reestablished civil government. The control of white over black, however, seemed to be restored, as each of the newly elected state legislatures enacted statutes severely limiting the freedom and rights of the blacks. These laws, known as black codes, restricted the ability of blacks to own land and to work as free laborers and denied them most of the civil and political rights enjoyed by whites. Many of the offices in the new governments, moreover, were won by disenfranchised Confederate leaders, and the President, rather than ordering new elections, granted pardons on a large scale. Sections in this article: The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. All rights reserved. See more Encyclopedia articles on: U.
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