What was a main difference between Lincolns plan of Reconstruction and Congresss plan of Reconstruction?

As the Civil War came to a close, it became obvious that there would be some difficulty in rejoining the South to the North. Tensions were still high, damage had been inflicted upon Southern lands, and the question of a national identity hung in the air. A plan for Reconstruction,the time period after the Civil War that was marked by a sense of rebuilding, was desperately needed.

Three different proposals were considered: President Lincoln’s, Vice President Andrew Johnson’s, and then the Radical Republican Plan. President Lincoln began formulating a reconstructive plan back in 1863, nearly two years before the Civil War ended. He first proposed his 10% Plan that year, which stated that when it came to a Southern state that had seceded, if 10% of the people who voted in the 1860 election voted to re-enter the Union and accepted Emancipation, they could come back into the Union. He saw this as a loyalty oath, and was sure to promise that any Confederate would receive a pardon. High Confederate officials and military leaders, however, would be excluded from this process.

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• 16th U.S. president; proposed Ten-Percent Plan for Reconstruction in 1863; assassinated by John Wilkes Booth in 1865

• 17th U.S. president; was vice president in Lincoln’s second term and became president upon Lincoln’s assassination

After major Union victories at the battles of Gettysburg and Vicksburg in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln began preparing his plan for Reconstruction to reunify the North and South after the war’s end. Because Lincoln believed that the South had never legally seceded from the Union, his plan for Reconstruction was based on forgiveness. He thus issued the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction in 1863 to announce his intention to reunite the once-united states. Lincoln hoped that the proclamation would rally northern support for the war and persuade weary Confederate soldiers to surrender.

The Ten-Percent Plan

Lincoln’s blueprint for Reconstruction included the Ten-Percent Plan,which specified that a southern state could be readmitted into the Union once 10 percent of its voters (from the voter rolls for the election of 1860) swore an oath of allegiance to the Union. Voters could then elect delegates to draft revised state constitutions and establish new state governments. All southerners except for high-ranking Confederate army officers and government officials would be granted a full pardon. Lincoln guaranteed southerners that he would protect their private property, though not their slaves. Most moderate Republicans in Congress supported the president’s proposal for Reconstruction because they wanted to bring a quick end to the war.

In many ways, the Ten-Percent Plan was more of a political maneuver than a plan for Reconstruction. Lincoln wanted to end the war quickly. He feared that a protracted war would lose public support and that the North and South would never be reunited if the fighting did not stop quickly. His fears were justified: by late 1863, a large number of Democrats were clamoring for a truce and peaceful resolution. Lincoln’s Ten-Percent Plan was thus lenient—an attempt to entice the South to surrender.

Lincoln’s Vision for Reconstruction

President Lincoln seemed to favor self-Reconstruction by the states with little assistance from Washington. To appeal to poorer whites, he offered to pardon all Confederates; to appeal to former plantation owners and southern aristocrats, he pledged to protect private property. Unlike Radical Republicans in Congress, Lincoln did not want to punish southerners or reorganize southern society. His actions indicate that he wanted Reconstruction to be a short process in which secessionist states could draft new constitutions as swiftly as possible so that the United States could exist as it had before. But historians can only speculate that Lincoln desired a swift reunification, for his assassination in 1865 cut his plans for Reconstruction short.

Louisiana Drafts a New Constitution

White southerners in the Union-occupied state of Louisiana met in 1864—before the end of the Civil War—to draft a new constitution in accordance with the Ten-Percent Plan. The progressive delegates promised free public schooling, improvements to the labor system, and public works projects. They also abolished slavery in the state but refused to give the would-be freed slaves the right to vote. Although Lincoln approved of the new constitution, Congress rejected it and refused to acknowledge the state delegates who won in Louisiana in the election of 1864.

The Radical Republicans

Many leading Republicans in Congress feared that Lincoln’s plan for Reconstruction was not harsh enough, believing that the South needed to be punished for causing the war. These Radical Republicans hoped to control the Reconstruction process, transform southern society, disband the planter aristocracy, redistribute land, develop industry, and guarantee civil liberties for former slaves. Although the Radical Republicans were the minority party in Congress, they managed to sway many moderates in the postwar years and came to dominate Congress in later sessions.