-
The Ten-Percent Plan
Reconstructing the Union started in 1863. This was two years before the Confederacy surrendered. After the Union's victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, Abraham Lincoln had issued the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction in which he made the Ten-Percent Plan. The Ten-Percent Plan had stipulated that each secessionist state had to redraft the constitution and could enter the Union again only after 10 percent of voters that are eligible to pledge an oath of allegiance to the U.S -
The Wade-Davis bill and the Freedmen's Bureau
Radical Republicans thought that Lincoln's plan was too lenient: they wanted to discipline the South for secession from the North, to transform southern society, and safeguard the rights of past slaves. Republican allies passed the Wade-Davis Bill in 1864.The Wade-Davis Bill required 50% voters of a state to take a loyalty oath: permitted only non-Confederates to vote for a new state constitution. Lincoln refused to sign this bill. -
Presidential Reconstruction
In the Ford's Theatre in Washington D.C., John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Lincoln. Andrew Johnson. All southerners, by Johnson, were readmitted to using Lincoln's Ten-Percent Plan, and granted all pardons.ohnson also ordered the Freedmen’s Bureau to return all confiscated lands to their original owners. -
Johnson’s “Swing Around the Circle”
Southerners had a very violent reaction to the Passage by Congress of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the two added amendments. White supremacists in Tennessee had made the Ku Klux Klan, which is an organization to "keep blacks in their place". There were many murders and riots of former slaves. -
Radical Reconstruction
Radical Republicans has believed that blacks had the same political rights, such as whites. They also believed that the Confederate leaders should have a punishment for their roles in the Civil War. Slavery was a big deal in the past. The blacks were treated very poorly. -
Carpetbaggers, Scalawags, and Sharecroppers
Carpetbaggers and scalawags went into the South during Reconstruction and exerted significant change there. In many respects, they achieves their goals in Republicanizing the South.
Former slaves in the South, became sharecroppers in the Reconstruction era. -
Liberal Republicans and the Election of 1872
Discovering the new scandals that are split in the Republican Party in 1872, the Liberal Republican broke from the ranks of moderates and radicals. Liberal Republicans wanted to institute reform, and downsize the federal government. Though already marred by scandal, Grant easily defeated Greeley by more than 200 electoral votes and 700,000 popular votes. -
The Depression of 1873
1873, the post war economic bubble in the U.S. finally burts. America broke out into a depression. Millions lost their jobs and many people lost a lot of money.
