Wrestling over Civil Right's during Reconstruction.

Wrestling over Civil Right's during Reconstruction

After the civil war our nation faced the difficult task of reuniting the states. Over 2 million slaves had been freed after the civil war and one fifth of white males had died in the war. Plantation owners traditionally ruled southern society and they were not in favor of granting any sort of social or political standing to the Negroes. The Northerner's supported the idea of a social structure that included rights to all the former slaves and confiscation of Confederate supporters' land as payment for their share of the cost to our nation during the war. At this time the South did not enjoy the privileges or rights of states and were considered merely territories. The reinstatement of these states would become a 6-year struggle for a new political and social structure in the south.

In 1863 Lincoln introduces a plan for reconstructing the confederate states under union control.

A political cartoon of Andrew Johnson and Abraham ...

Sign for "colored" waiting room at a Greyhound bus...

Congress Parkway Bridge

This was the first attempt of reconstruction. Lincoln had a southern background and offered a very lenient plan. Abolish slavery, and get 10% of the voting citizens to swear an oath of allegiance to the union then achieve official readmission into the union. His plan included very limited black suffrage in the South. I believe Lincoln's plan was a mediation of what he felt would be reasonable to most white Southerners and not objected by the blacks, who previously had no civil rights, in an attempt to reclaim the South and make all parties feel whole. Lincoln was not thinking of the North who represented congress and had made no attempt in including their views in his reconstruction plan. Congress passed the Wade - Davis bill in 1864 that called for stricter stipulations before a Confederate territory could be officially readmitted. Lincoln refused...