Lincoln's Plan and Congress's Response

Lincoln's Plan and Congress's Response

From 1863 to 1869, Presidents Abraham Lincoln, along with Andrew Johnson (who became president in 1865) took a moderate position designed to bring the South back to normal as soon as possible. During this time, the Radical Republicans (as they called themselves) used Congress to block Lincoln's moderate approach, impose harsh terms, and upgrade the rights of the Freedmen (former slaves). The views of Lincoln and Johnson prevailed until the election of 1866, at which point the Radicals were able to take control of policy, remove former Confederates from power, and enfranchise the Freedmen. A Republican coalition came to power in nearly all the southern states and set out to transform the society by setting up a free labor economy, with support from the Army and the Freedman's Bureau (Figure 1).

In his 1863 Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, Lincoln established a plan that would have granted presidential pardons to all southerners, save the political leaders during secession, who took an oath of future allegiance to the Union. Lincoln's plan would re-legitimize a state as soon as 10 percent of the voting population of the 1860 general election took the oath and the state government accepted the emancipation of the slaves. By December 1864, the Lincoln plan of Reconstruction had been enacted in Louisiana; hence it was referred to as Lincoln’s Louisiana Plan. The state legislature sent two Senators and five Representatives to take their seats in Washington.

However, Radical Republicans in Congress refused to count any of the votes from Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee, rejecting Lincoln's moderate Reconstruction plan as too lenient (Figure 2). They passed the more demanding Wade-Davis Billin 1864, requiring 50 percent of the voters to take the loyalty oath and forbidding anyone who had supported the Confederacy of holding public or federal office. Lincoln pocket-vetoed this bill.

In March 1865, Congress created a new agency, the Freedman's Bureau. This agency provided food, shelter, medical aid, employment aid, education, and other needs for blacks and poor whites. The Freedman's Bureau was the largest federal aid relief plan at the time and it was the first large scale governmental welfare program.

Lincoln continued to advocate his Louisiana Plan as a model for all states up until his assassination on April 14, 1865. The plan successfully began the Reconstruction process of ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment in all states. After Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865, Vice-President Andrew Johnson took office. President Johnson proved to be an obstacle to the Radical Republicans in Congress, who attempted to completely overhaul the Southern government and economy. In May, 1865, Johnson made his own proclamation that was very similar to Lincoln's that offered amnesty to almost all Confederates who took an oath of allegiance to the Union. Johnson also reversed General Sherman's decision to set aside land for the express use of freed slaves. Not long after Johnson took office, all of the former Confederate states were able to be readmitted.

In 1866, Johnson vetoed two important bills: the first bolstered the protection the Freedmen's Bureau gave to blacks and the second, a civil rights bill that gave blacks full citizenship. The Republicans then united against Johnson to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1866 which outlawed the black codes that had been prevalent throughout the South, and the Fourteenth Amendment that granted citizenship to all persons born in the United States and required the states to respect the rights of all U.S. citizens. Congress also passed three Reconstruction acts in 1867 that divided the southern states into five military districts under the control of the Union army. The military commander in charge of each district was to ensure that the state fulfilled the requirements of Reconstruction by ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment and by providing voting rights without a race qualification. In 1868, the Radicals, upset at President Johnson's opposition to Congressional Reconstruction, filed impeachment charges but the action failed by one vote in the Senate.

Lincoln is typically portrayed as taking the moderate position and fighting the Radical positions. There is considerable debate on how well Lincoln, had he lived, would have handled Congress during the Reconstruction process that took place after the Civil War ended. One historical camp argues that Lincoln's flexibility, pragmatism, and superior political skills with Congress would have solved Reconstruction with far less difficulty. The other camp believes the Radicals would have attempted to impeach Lincoln, just as they did his successor, Andrew Johnson, in 1868.