"Some men are born great, some achieve greatness and others lived during the Reconstruction period"
Paul Laurence Dunbar, 1903
LINCOLN'S PLANS FOR RECONSTRUCTION
The preceding quote perfectly expresses the frustrations felt by many Americans during the Reconstruction Era. During this period, political leaders in the North had to decide how the former states of the Confederacy would be assimilated back into the Union. What should be done with former Confederate leaders? What should be done with former slaves? How much punishment (if any) should the former states of the Confederacy be made to endure? There were obviously incredibly complicated questions, and the results bad to be imperfect in some manner.
Other factors increased the difficulty of the Southern assimilation after the Civil War. It was only when defeated Confederate soldiers returned to their homes that the extent of the devastation of the South during the war became widely known. Virtually the entire Southern railway system and many farms and cities were destroyed by the war. In addition, nearly one-third of all adult males residing in Confederate states died or were wounded during the war. For those plantation owners whose plantations were not destroyed, laborers now had to be hired; many of these owners were now strapped for cash. Many freed blacks wandered the countryside looking for work, while many poorer white men with jobs lived in fear of being replaced by freed black men.
The problems of Reconstruction were compounded by the assassination of Abraham Lincoln at the very end of the Civil War, Lincoln had begun constructing a Reconstruction plan as early as mid-1863, Lincoln devised a plan for former Confederate to rejoin the Union that was entitled the Ten Percent Plan. By the provisions of this plan, citizens of former Confederate states would be given the opportunity to swear allegiance to the government in Washington (high-ranking Confederate military and civilian authorities would not be offered this opportunity). When 10 percent of the registered voters in the state signed this pledge, the state was afforded the chance to form its own state government, which obviously had to be loyal to Washington.
Tennessee, Louisiana, and Arkansas all went through the appropriate procedures to form loyal state governments, yet their applications for renewed participation in the Union were not approved by the Radical Republicans who dominated the Congress. These men were determined to punish the Southern states in any way possible for their “betrayal” of the Union. This group, led by Thaddeus Stevens, included several who had been ardent abolitionists in the years before the Civil War. They believed that power in the Southern states had to be totally reorganized in order for blacks to achieve equality. The Radical Republicans also saw the creation of Reconstruction policy as a constitutional issue, stating that it was the job of the Congress and not the president to create this policy.
Radical Republicans felt that action was needed to counter the Black Codes, which had been passed by all Southern state legislatures in 1866. These sets of regulations limited movement by blacks, prohibited interracial marriage, and insisted that blacks obtain special certificates to hold certain jobs.
The Radical Republicans were insistent on immediate voting rights for blacks in the South; this desire was behind the Wade-Davis Act, which was passed by Congress in the summer of 1864. This bill stated that Congress would only authorize a state government in former Confederate states when the majority of voters took an “ironclad” oath, stating that they were not now disloyal to the Union nor had they ever been disloyal. Under these provisions, it would be impossible for any state to reenter the Union without a large number of black voters. President Lincoln killed this bill by a pocket veto.