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Andrea DeRoeck 9 - 05 - 00 Part 1 From 1861 to 1865 president Lincoln led the United States through the civil war, preserving the Union and in the process ending slavery. After the civil war the largest subject at hand, was that of Reconstruction. Reconstruction raised three major questions. Can the U. S. be truly united, can blacks and whites live together, and who will run the country?
Shortly after the war, and even more shortly after the process of reconstruction had begun, Lincoln was assassinated. He had started a very vague plan which included, appointing provisional state representatives and government to the states of Lousiana, North Carolina, and Tennessee, the respect of private property rights (except in the case of slaves), and The Proclamation of Amnesty of Reconstruction, a. k. a. , The Pledge of Alliance. He also indicated that in time, all formal leaders would be granted pardon.
His death, in April of 1865, left Johnson, his vice president, and the only Southern Democrat loyal to the Union, to take over the job of president, and reconstruction. During the summer of 1865, Johnson proceeded in carrying out Lincolns Reconstruction plan, with only minor changes. These modifications included, appointing a governor for each state that had seceded and restoring political rights to a majority of southern citizens through pardons. Conventions were held in each of the former Confederate states to repeal the ordinances of secession, discuss the war debt, and draw up new state constitutions. In time, the citizens of each state were able to elect their own governor and state legislature. When the legislature of state ratified the thirteenth amendment, which stated: No slavery or involuntary servitude except for punishment, the new sate government would then be recognized and the state would then be admitted back into the Union.
The process, with only a few exceptions, had almost been completed at the end of 1865. However, the states that had seceded were not yet completely as they had been before the war, because Congress still refused to seat their Senators and Representatives. Both Lincoln and Johnson had know that Congress would have the right to refuse the southerns legislatures seats, under the clause of the Constitution that states: Each house shall be the judge of qualifications of its own members. Under the leadership of Thaddeus Stevens, the congressmen who still wanted to punish the south, refused to seat its elected southern legislators. Within the next few months, they proceeded to work out their own reconstruction plan which strayed drastically from the original version.
The group of officials responsible for this new plan were called the Radical Republicans. The political viewpoints of these radical came in many varying degrees and they often disagreed about important national issues, they were united however in that, from the 1866 elections on, a Radical Republican was any member of congress who was committed to destroying the institution of slavery and for granting civil rights to African Americans. In February of 1866 they made a bill to extend the Freedman Bureau. If a former slave had a grievance with a plantation owner he could take them to court. In March, they came up with the Civil Rights Act of 1866.
Both bills were vetoed by Johnson. His resistance made the radicals fight even harder against him. This started the move to the fourteenth amendment which states that: No state shall deprive an individual of life, liberty or property without due cause. They also stated that the southerners could only count slaves in their censuses if they gave them the right to vote. The southerners did not accept the new policies, so in order to manipulate the southern electric 3 / 4 ths of the states had to ratify to pass new amendments, so military people were sent in to enforce all these acts.
Johnson was an obstacle to their new form of reconstruction, and hated by all, so they set him up using the Tenure of Office Act which stated that: A member could not be removed until the senate had named a successor. He, of course violated this act, and was impeached, however, we was acquitted by one vote, because of the precedent that it would create. All of the above, bills and amendments were eventually passed, however, Reconstruction proved to be short-lived. It took another century for the nation to begin to live up to the promise of equality for all its citizens.
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