The new Reconstruction has given freedom to more than four million slaves. This is great achievement for equality in the United States of America. African-Americans are now able to work as free men. Johnson’s Presidential Reconstruction Program led mad southern states loyal to the Union and slave free. However, southern states enacted bills to regulate African-American activity which led to the Civil Rights Act. At the end of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln feared that an emancipation would drive the border slave states loyal to the Union into the Confederacy. Also, he feared that this would anger conservative northerners. However, slaves convinced Lincoln that emancipation became a military and political necessity. Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation which freed the slaves. Lincoln also pushed that free and enlisted blacks deserved the right to vote; however, he was murdered days later so Reconstruction plans fell into his successor. In May 1865, President Andrew Johnson presented his Reconstruction plans. Johnson though that the federal government had no right to determine voting requirements as other issues at the state level. Also, he stated that the southern states never lost the right to govern themselves. Under Johnson’s …show more content…
These laws restricted blacks’ activity to secure their availability as a labor force. These acts made Congress furious and in early 1866 Congress passed the Freedmen’s Bureau and Civil Rights Bills and sent them to Johnson for approval. These bills extended the life of the Freedmen’s Bureau and stated that all persons born in the United States as citizens shared equality under the law. Johnson decided to veto the bills which led to a permanent rupture to his relationship with Congress which would conclude in Johnson’s impeachment in 1868. The Civil Rights Act later became the first major bill to successfully become a law after presidential
Presidential Reconstruction by Andrew Johnson promoted racism and injustice against the Freedmen and was one of the reasons why Reconstruction failed. “Johnson openly encouraged the South to draft its notorious Black Codes law enacted across the south by the Fall of 1865, that denied the Freedmen political liberty and restricted their economic options and physical mobility” (Blight 29). The Black Code law which was established by the White Southerners was a way to reverse the rights and freedom gained by the African Americans, during the radical Reconstruction era, rights which were very hard for the Freedmen to obtain in the first place. The Black Codes gave power back to the White Supremacists to control and manipulate the Freedmen
Reconstruction is during which the United States began to rebuild the Southern society after they lost to the civil war. It lasted from 1865 to 1877, and it was initiated by President Lincoln until his assassination in 1865. President Johnson continued Lincoln’s agenda to continue the Reconstruction. Throughout the process of Reconstruction, one of its main purpose was to guarantees for equal rights for all people, especially for the African Americans. Even though slavery was abolished after the civil war, many Southerners were still against the idea of equal rights for all black people, such as the Republicans.
President Abraham Lincoln came across multiple issues during the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation. Some of the political issues had to deal with the border states. In the back of his mind, he mostly wanted to get rid of slavery, but the border states don’t want slavery to be abolished, and Lincoln knew this. Lincoln didn’t want to start the war because he wanted to seem as the good guy trying to defend himself, and not attack someone else, so he can persuade the border states to join his side. Along with this, he didn’t know when to publish the Emancipation Proclamation because he didn’t want to seem desperate for help.
1. “How did Lincoln and Johnson each approach reconstruction?” Johnson did not have Lincoln’s moral sense and political judgement when it came to reconstruction. “As wartime president, Lincoln had offered amnesty to all but high-ranking Confederates” (464). Lincoln had proposed that when ten percent of a rebellious states voters had sworn loyalty (taken an oath), then the state would be restored to the Union as long as it had approved the thirteenth amendment to abolish slavery.
Abraham Lincoln was a strong believer in people 's individual freedom no matter the race, and with the start of the civil war he decided to take action. In 1863 Lincoln delivered one of his famous speeches; the Emancipation Proclamation. The Emancipation Proclamation added to the effects with the civil war because with the speech “the aim of the war changed to include the freeing of slaves in addition to preserving the Union. Although the Proclamation initially freed only the slaves in the rebellious states, by the end of the war the Proclamation had influenced and prepared citizens to advocate and accept abolition for all slaves in both the North and South.” The
Soon after he was murder. Obviously he was catching other people 's attention for someone to do this. This person was intimidated by Lincoln. in another hand there was Andrew Johnson, he also wanted to rebuild the union soon after lincoln was murdered. Reconstruction failed in the Civil War, some failures from the North effectively rebuilt the South.
Andrew Johnson, a southerner himself, believed that the blacks should have no role in the reconstruction. Between 1865 and 1867 Johnson ordered new provisional governors to establish new all white governments, that ruled similarly to the racist confederates before them. Some things did change for the former slaves as Universities and primary and secondary schools were established for them by the Freedman’s Bureau. Now the freedman’s bureau didn’t grant the slaves the one thing they wanted most, land. To the blacks, land was as essential part of truly becoming free.
After the Andrew Johnson’s resistance to reconstruction included bring Confederate states into the Union and letting the African American men vote. Under his held ideals of “white suffrage”. It pitted him in opposition against Congress; thus, his stubborn stance against Reconstruction is the real reason that lead to his impeachment hearing under the Tenure of Office Act of 1867, which is a federal law that passed by congress to restrict the power of the President remove people from office without the approval of the Senate, when he removed Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton from his office. Reconstruction was the period following the Civil War, when the states of the Confederacy where the government controlled bringing them back into the union and gave rights to African Americans in the process. White suffrage simply meant: only white males could vote.
As Commander in Chief, Lincoln initially wanted to ameliorate relations with the Confederacy by having them return to the Union and cease rebellion. So President Lincoln was cautious to abolish slavery. As he once wrote in a letter, “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy Slavery.” Fearing the South’s advance in the War, President Lincoln utilized the Union victory at Antietam, to deliver his decree. The Emancipation Proclamation did three things: it undermined the Confederacy's slave economy, created an influx of soldiers for the Union and made the Civil War explicitly about the institution of slavery.
Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation to keep the Union of the nation together, basically trying to hold the country together. Even though he stated this many times before, southern states still believe that he would take away their slaves. Which they are half correct on that statement, Lincoln having said “My main object in this struggle is to save the Union. It is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it.
Before the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln's main goal was to preserve the Union, not end slavery. However, as the war progressed, he began to realize that slavery was the root cause of the
The Reconstruction period was an important first step in the effort to secure civil rights and economic power for the former slaves. During the period of 1865 to 1905, the lives of African Americans in the South changed vastly. Civil rights for the African American community were ensured by the Reconstruction Amendments which outlawed slavery, granted citizenship to everyone born within the United States, and guaranteed the right to vote. For many African Americans, freedom meant independence from white control. In the wake of advancing Union armies, millions of black southerners sought to secure that freedom with economic opportunity, which for many meant land ownership.
The reconstruction period was a failure because African Americans, mainly males, were not treated with equality although the constitution said that the they were free and had the right to vote, be educated and had the right to liberty, life and the pursuit to happiness. Organizations, like the KKK, were created to harm freed slaves and their families. Laws were created such as the Black Codes restricting former slaves from their rights. African Americans endured a lot of violence over the years. “In Grayson, Texas, a white man and two friends murdered three former slaves because the wanted to ‘ thin the niggers out and drive them to their hole’”.
African Americans were free during Reconstruction, because of the new rights given to them. The first reason to why they were free is from Document A, which shows the 14th Amendment that states anyone born or living in the United States has the right to be a citizen and they cannot be deprived by anyone of life, liberty or property. This represents freedom because no
Abraham Lincoln’s vs Andrew Johnson’s Reconstruction Plan Lincoln shared the uncommon belief that the confederate states could still be part of the union and that the cause of the rebellion was only a few within the states which lead him to begin the reconstruction in December of 1863. This resulted in plans with lenient guidelines and although they were challenged by Wade-Davis Bill, Lincoln still rejected his ideas and kept his policies in place. Lincoln also allowed land to be given the newly freed slave or homeless white by distributing the land that had been confiscated from former land owners however this fell through once Johnson took office. After Lincoln’s death when Johnson was elected many things started to turn away from giving blacks equal rights and resulted in many things such a black codes which kept newly freed slaves from having the same rights as whites. When Lincoln first acted after the civil war, he offered policies that would allow the confederate slaves to become part of the union again and would allow a pardon for those states.