Reconstruction Plan. Did It Work?
03-05-13
Interact with History In my opinion, the government did not do as well of a job on reconstructing the south as they could have. I think that the best plan made for reconstruction was Lincoln’s ten percent plan. This plan’s intentions were to bring the southern states back into the union as quickly as possible. Lincoln believed that secession was unconstitutional therefore it was impossible. He believed that it was the people who had rebelled not the state. Lincoln’s ten percent plan would pardon all confederates who just rebelled and “seceded” from the union and make them swear allegiance to the union. It was known as the ten percent plan because after ten percent of the people on the 1860 voting list had taken the oath of allegiance, a confederate state now had gained the ability to form a new state government and gain representation in congress. The reason that this plan was not so popular was because it didn’t give African Americans and former slave’s full citizenship and the right to vote. No other country that had abolished slavery had ever given them the right to vote but the radical reconstruction plan wanted to. I think that they shouldn’t give them the right to vote because many of them were just slaves who were not educated at all. Most slaves over the age of 20 were illiterate. I think that the best way to reconstruct not only the south but the entire nation would have been to focus on actually reconstructing the nation. By this I mean that they should have helped fix their land and get their economy back on track instead of blaming the south for the entire war. Also they needed to get the African Americans to try to fit in to society. One main reason why I don’t think that reconstruction was successful is because of the amount of racism and prejudice that existed in the nation. After the civil rights act, the Ku Klux Klan or KKK became very popular. This group’s main goal was to restore white supremacy. Many of these groups
Interact with History In my opinion, the government did not do as well of a job on reconstructing the south as they could have. I think that the best plan made for reconstruction was Lincoln’s ten percent plan. This plan’s intentions were to bring the southern states back into the union as quickly as possible. Lincoln believed that secession was unconstitutional therefore it was impossible. He believed that it was the people who had rebelled not the state. Lincoln’s ten percent plan would pardon all confederates who just rebelled and “seceded” from the union and make them swear allegiance to the union. It was known as the ten percent plan because after ten percent of the people on the 1860 voting list had taken the oath of allegiance, a confederate state now had gained the ability to form a new state government and gain representation in congress. The reason that this plan was not so popular was because it didn’t give African Americans and former slave’s full citizenship and the right to vote. No other country that had abolished slavery had ever given them the right to vote but the radical reconstruction plan wanted to. I think that they shouldn’t give them the right to vote because many of them were just slaves who were not educated at all. Most slaves over the age of 20 were illiterate. I think that the best way to reconstruct not only the south but the entire nation would have been to focus on actually reconstructing the nation. By this I mean that they should have helped fix their land and get their economy back on track instead of blaming the south for the entire war. Also they needed to get the African Americans to try to fit in to society. One main reason why I don’t think that reconstruction was successful is because of the amount of racism and prejudice that existed in the nation. After the civil rights act, the Ku Klux Klan or KKK became very popular. This group’s main goal was to restore white supremacy. Many of these groups