Civil War Vs Radical Reconstruction Essay

With the end of Civil War, the victorious north faced an unprecedented challenge about how to reconstruct the ravaged and resentful south as it was the large responsibility for the federal government and its resources were inadequate. President Lincoln issued a Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction which said that 10 percent of the southerners who voted in 1860 needed to sign a loyalty oath to the union and after that the states could join the union back. They were also got the presidential pardon of excusing them of treason. His actions indicate that he wanted Reconstruction to be a short process in which secessionist states could draft new constitutions as swiftly as possible. He returned all property to former Confederates who pledged loyalty to the …show more content…
This faction was in control of the congressional Reconstruction and they struggled from 1866-1870 to extend equal rights to all Americans. Congress asserted its right to organize the former Confederate states rather than the executive branch, launched a much more radical plan of reconstruction that called for all former Confederate officers and leaders of the government to be banned from the political life in the south. The plan was called Radical Reconstruction and it was implemented by the congress. They planned to reorganize the property of former confederates and allocate it to the freed slaves. They wanted to change the political and social dynamics of the confederate. They wanted to allow African-Americans to vote and hold office and wanted to transform southern society so that the planter elite no longer controlled it. The Radical Republicans passed the Wade-Davis Bill that required more than 50 percent of white males take an oath of allegiance before the state could call a constitutional convention. The bill also required that the state constitutional conventions abolish