Reconstruction (1865-1877 Response Post
Reconstruction (1865-1877), the turbulent period that followed the Civil War, was an attempt to reintegrate Southern states from the Confederacy as well as 4 million newly liberated people into the United States. In 1865 and 1866, new southern state legislatures created draconian "Black Codes" to govern the work and behavior of former enslaved persons and other African Americans under President Andrew Johnson's administration. The Republican majority in Congress by now despised the president, and they wanted to prevent him from interfering in congressional Reconstruction (U.S. History, 2019).
Lincoln's strategy to reintegrate the Confederate states back into the Union was the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, which granted presidential pardons to any Southerners (excluding political leaders) who accepted an oath of future allegiance to the Union. On December 8, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln offers his conciliatory plan for reunification of the United States with his Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction (History.com, 2022). The ten percent plan granted a general pardon to all Southerners except high-ranking Confederate government and military leaders; required ten percent of the 1860 voting population in the former rebel states to take a binding oath of future allegiance to the United States; and provided for slave emancipation. Even before the Civil War ended, the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction laid the groundwork for secessionist states to rejoin the Union. According to the idea, if 10% of the people of a seceded state pledged allegiance to the Union, they might elect representatives to form a new state government.
At the end of May 1865, President Andrew Johnson announced his plans for Reconstruction, which reflected both his staunch Unionism and his firm belief in states’ rights (History.com, 2022). According to Johnson, the southern states had never relinquished their ability to govern themselves, and the federal government had no power to decide voting rules or other state-level issues. All land captured by the Union Army and handed to previously enslaved individuals by the army reverted to its prewar owners under Johnson's Presidential Reconstruction. As a result of Johnson's leniency, several southern states successfully implemented a series of legislation known as the "black codes" in 1865 and 1866, which were aimed to restrict liberated Black people's behavior and maintain their availability as a work force. Many in the North were outraged by these draconian laws, including many members of Congress, who refused to seat representatives and senators elected from southern states. The Radicals then dropped the impeachment effort, but the events had effectively silenced President Johnson, and Radical Republicans continued with their plan to reconstruct the South (U.S. History, 2019).
A congressional plan for postwar recovery that imposed harsh standards on the Southern states and supported newly freed slaves (freedmen) in their pursuit of political, economic, and social opportunities. Reconstruction is generally divided into three phases: Wartime Reconstruction, Presidential Reconstruction and Radical or Congressional Reconstruction, which ended with the Compromise of 1877, when the U.S. government pulled the last of its troops from southern states, ending the Reconstruction era (History.com, 2022). The approach of Presidential Reconstruction encouraged more forbearance toward the South in terms of preparations for readmission to the Union. Congressional Reconstruction blamed the South for the Civil War and sought punishment.
There was no provision in the Constitution that allowed the administration the authority to raise soldiers against a duly elected legislature. The militia clause was not intended to be used in response to the actions of a lawfully elected legislature. Laws challenged by combinations too powerful to be quashed by the usual course of court procedures or by the powers conferred in marshals by law were referred to by Lincoln. The Southern states were not misbehaving children. They desired self-government and had several legitimate grievances against federal authorities and Lincoln. The Reconstruction era redefined U.S. citizenship and expanded the franchise, changed the relationship between the federal government and the governments of the states, and highlighted the differences between political and economic democracy (Foner, 2021). The 1876 Compromise effectively ended the Reconstruction era. Southern Democrats' vows to preserve Black people's civil and political rights were broken, and the elimination of federal intervention in southern affairs resulted in widespread disenfranchisement of Black voters.
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References:
OpenStax. (2019). U.S. history. OpenStax CNX. Retrievedfrom //cnx.org/contents/
History.com Editors (Links to an external site.) (2022). President Lincoln issues Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/lincoln-issues-proclamation-of-amnesty-and-reconstruction
Reconstruction after the civil war (1865-1877)
The article aptly captures the events during the reconstruction after the civil war under president Johnson and his rift with the congress. The article further states that the opposition leader who later became president Lincoln strove to reintegrate the Confederate states back into the Union and requiring the southerners pledge their allegiance to the United States.
The author posits that reconstruction was completed by 1877 with the Compromise of Washington when the U.S. government withdrew its final troops from the southern states. At this time, American citizenship and voting rights were re-defined and the federal and state governments' relationships were recontextualized. The article concludes by mentioning that a large number of African-Americans were denied the right to vote when the federal government stopped meddling with southern concerns.
