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Jessica Hillis
Mr. Gillard
AP US History
18 December 2006
Essay 15
After the Civil War ended, a period known as Reconstruction began. Many
believed that the Reconstruction period was a failure politically, economically and
socially. While Lincoln was still alive, Reconstruction was a success, but once Andrew
Johnson became president after Lincoln’s assassination, Reconstruction took a turn for
the worse.
First of all, Reconstruction was designed to reintegrate the South back into the
Union after the Civil War. Politically and economically President Lincoln helped when he
proposed his “ten percent plan”, which stated that a state could be brought back into the
Union when 10 percent of its voters in the presidential election of 1860 had taken an oath
of allegiance to the Union. The ten percent plan also meant that those southern states had
to abolish slavery.
Lincoln showed compassion for the newly defeated Confederacy by vetoing the
WadeDavis Bill of 1864. The WadeDavis Bill stated that 50 percent of the voters had to
pledge allegiance to the Union, but no one who had served in the Confederate army or in
Confederate office would be allowed to vote, increasing the impossibility for the southern
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states to be readmitted.
Once Johnson became president though, things changed. He took political and
social advantage when created the “black codes.” Though “freedman”, or free blacks had
more rights than they did before the Civil War, there were greatly limited. Southern
plantation owners feared that if blacks were given too many rights, they would lose their
essential labor force. Among other provisions, they stringently limited blacks' ability to
control their own employment and they had no voting rights. In essence, the Black Codes
instated by Johnson took a step back from what the Reconstruction period was trying to
achieve.
Radical Reconstructionists politically took another step backward during the
Reconstruction period. They wanted the southern states to not have the right to vote, until
they were reinstated back into the Union, even though, technically they had never left the
Union. Southern states were not allowed to vote, having not yet been readmitted to the
Union.
Because Abraham Lincoln was not alive for the greater portion of the
Reconstruction period, it can be stated that the Reconstruction period was, over all, a
failure.