Political Reconstruction

Presidential Reconstruction

Lincoln's Plan

Lincoln’s ten percent plan: In it all southerners, except high-ranking Confederate officials, could get a full pardon and restoration of rights after taking an oath, pledging loyalty to the Union and accepting the end of slavery. When ten percent of the 1860 voting population had taken this oath, citizens could vote in elections that would create new state governments and new state constitutions. After that the state would once again be eligible for representation in Congress and readmitted to the Union.

Lincoln's Assassination

April 14, 1865: President Lincoln was assassinated while attending a performance of Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. The assassin, John Wilkes Booth, escaped with a broken leg, but he was shot later. Lincoln was succeeded by his vice president, Andrew Johnson.

John Wilkes Booth: Booth was a Southern sympathizer during the Civil War, who plotted with six fellow-conspirators to assassinate Union leaders. On Apr. 14, 1865, he shot President Lincoln during a performance of Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. He escaped, but was later shot and killed. Read more about the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

Johnson's Reconstruction Efforts

Well before the end of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln began formulating a plan to restore the Confederate states to the Union. His Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction (December 1863) provided that if at least ten percent of a state's voters in the 1860 election accepted emancipation and took an oath of allegiance to the United States, then the state could form a new government and return to the Union. Blacks, who obviously had not voted in 1860, were excluded, as were most Confederate officials and army officers, who were disenfranchised unless they appealed for and received a presidential pardon. The Radical Republicans considered the “Ten Percent Plan” far too generous. The reconstruction approach they preferred was embodied in the Wade-Davis bill (July 1864), which called for the establishment of a military government in each state and required at least fifty percent of the eligible voters to swear allegiance to the United States. Only those who could take an “ironclad” oath that they had never willingly supported the Confederacy could vote or participate in the state constitutional conventions. Although Congress approved the Wade-Davis bill, Lincoln did not sign it before Congress adjourned, and the bill died (pocket veto).

Following Lincoln's assassination, the task of implementing Reconstruction fell to his vice president, Andrew Johnson. A Democrat and the only senator from the South who remained loyal to the Union, Johnson at first seemed ready to take a hard line against the former Confederacy. He talked about punishing the traitors and breaking up the large plantations, but at the same time, he supported states' rights and had little sympathy for blacks. His policies after he became president were even more lenient than Lincoln's, and they caused a confrontation with the Radical Republicans in Congress that culminated in his impeachment, but was aquitted (found not guilty) in a trial in the Sentate, and was not removed from office. It was the first time the impeachment process was used on a president.

Johnson's policies. In May 1865, with Congress out of session, Johnson began to implement his own Reconstruction program. Amnesty was granted to any southerner who took an oath of allegiance, with the exception of Confederate officials, officers, and wealthy landowners. Exclusion of the last group reflected Johnson's hatred of the planter aristocracy rather than some condition that had to do with restoring the former Confederate states. Those who were not eligible for amnesty could appeal for a pardon. Johnson appointed provisional governors and authorized them to set up state conventions, which in turn were charged with declaring secession illegal; repudiating Confederate debts; ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States; and scheduling elections. Once each convention's elections were held for governor, state legislators, and members of Congress, the states would be readmitted to the Union.

Several states refused to either repudiate the huge debt produced by the war or unconditionally accept the Thirteenth Amendment. Southern voters also elected to Congress high-ranking Confederate officials and officers, some of whom had not received one of the thirteen thousand pardons Johnson issued during the summer of 1865. The new state legislatures adopted so-called black codes to keep the newly freed African Americans, or freedmen, in their place. Blacks were required to either sign labor contracts or face arrest for vagrancy, and they were not allowed to serve on juries or testify in court. Despite these violations of both the letter and spirit of his program, the president announced that Reconstruction was complete in December 1865. However, Congress refused to seat the newly elected senators and representatives from the South.

Congressional Reconstruction

In early 1866, Congressional Republicans, appalled by mass killing of ex-slaves and adoption of restrictive black codes, seized control of Reconstruction from President Johnson. Congress denied representatives from the former Confederate states their Congressional seats and passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and wrote the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, extending citizenship rights to African Americans and guaranteeing them equal protection of the laws. The 14th Amendment also reduced representation in Congress of any southern state that deprived African Americans of the vote. In 1870, the country went even further by ratifying the Fifteenth Amendment, which gave voting rights to black men. The most radical proposals advanced during Reconstruction--to confiscate plantations and redistribute portions to the freemen--were defeated.

In 1867, Congress overrode a presidential veto and passed an act that divided the South into military districts and placed the former Confederate states under martial law pending their adoption of constitutions guaranteeing civil liberties to former slaves. The Reconstruction Act of 1867 gave African American men in the South the right to vote three years before ratification of the 15th Amendment. With the vote came representation. Freedmen served in state legislatures and Hiram Revels became the first African American to sit in the U.S. Senate.

President Johnson vs. The Congress

Congress was divided among Radical, Moderate, and Conservative Republicans and Democrats. Rather than working with congressmen who might have supported his Reconstruction plan, Johnson alienated potential political allies by vetoing legislation intended to ensure civil rights for African Americans. A bill was introduced in February 1866 to reauthorize the one-year-old Freedmen's Bureau and allow it to try in military courts persons accused of depriving former slaves of their rights. Established in March 1865, the Bureau had provided blacks in the South with material assistance, schools, and guidance in settling on abandoned land. The new legislation was passed in July over Johnson's veto. The Civil Rights Act of 1866, which granted blacks born in the United States the same rights as white citizens, also became law (in April) over the president's objection.

Because of doubts about the constitutionality of the new Civil Rights Act, the congressional Joint Committee on Reconstruction drafted the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. It was approved by both houses in June 1866. Essentially repudiating the 1857 Dred Scott decision, the amendment clearly states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States … are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” It provides for due process and equal protection under the law. The amendment also denies to anyone who had participated in rebellion against the United States or had given aid and comfort to those in rebellion the right to hold any national or state office, an exclusion intended to undercut Johnson's pardon policy and protect the rights of blacks, particularly those of former slaves and particularly their right to vote.

Johnson denounced the Fourteenth Amendment and urged the southern states not to ratify it. Adoption of the amendment was an issue in the 1866 congressional elections, but the president's campaign against it did not work. Republicans were in control of both the House and Senate, and they gave a ringing endorsement to the amendment and congressional, not presidential, Reconstruction.