Reconstruction of the Union after the Civil War was a very difficult task to do. It seemed everyone had their own opinion on how to accept the southern states back into the union.
The first man who attempted this and also was the president who led the Union to victory was Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln's plan was the 10% plan which asked for only 10% of voters in the 1860 election to take an oath of allegiance to the Union and accept emancipation. After they took the oath of allegiance, they were then allowed to organize a state government. Their new state constitution had to be republican form, abolish slavery and provide for black education. There were no actions taken against anyone, not even the rich. Lincoln was very lenient towards the previous confederate states and the Radical Republicans did not like this. They believed that Congress should set the terms for which states would regain their rights in the Union. A senator by the name of Benjamin Wade of Ohio and Representative Henry Winter Davis of Maryland formulated a much stricter plan of reconstruction. Their plan proposed that Confederate states would be ruled temporarily by a military governor to make sure blacks do receive their rights and they increased Lincol
Congress had readmitted the representatives of seven states by June 1868. Texas, Virginia and Mississippi did not complete the process until 1869. Georgia finally followed in 1874.
n's 10% of white male voters to 50% white male voters to take an oath of allegiance before drafting a new state constitution. Plus they restricted political power to the hard-core Unionists in each state. Lincoln vetoed the Wade-Davis Bill but agreed to place the South temporarily under military rule...unfortunately Lincoln was shot by Booth a few days later so Lincoln wasn't able to finish his task of reconstruction.
Finally Congress stepped in and made their own program of Reconstruction beginning with the first Reconstruction act in March 1867. This plan placed the 10 unreconstructed states under military commanders, the act provided that in enrolling voters, officials were to include black adult males but not former Confederates who were barred from holding office under the Fourteenth Amendment. Delegates to the state conventions would frame constitutions that provided for black suffrage and disqualified prominent ex-Confederates from office. The first state legislatures to meet under the new constitution were required to ratify the Four
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