Former Confederates would be stripped of their right to vote, while formerly enslaved Black men would gain it. Their response, the 1864 Wade-Davis Bill, would have required half of a state’s voters to take a loyalty oath and swear they had never voluntarily taken up arms against the Union. Unauthorized use is prohibited.īut a group of congressmen and senators known as Radical Republicans disliked the plan, both for its perceived lenience to the rebels, and because it didn’t provide formerly enslaved people any civil rights aside from their freedom. Those who took the oath would be pardoned, and states that cleared the bar could draft new constitutions and convene state governments. In December 1863, the Republican president issued a proclamation that offered to reinstate former Confederate states once 10 percent of their voters pledged allegiance to the Union and promised to adhere to the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that the United States would “recognize and maintain” the freedom of all people enslaved in seceded states. Lincoln wanted to make it easy for them to return, fearing that too harsh a plan would make reunification impossible. Plans to readmit Confederate states to the Union began long before the war’s end. But it was marred by tragedy, political infighting, and a disastrous backlash that set the stage for more than a century of segregation and voter suppression.
The ensuing period of reform and rebuilding, known as Reconstruction, briefly succeeded in providing Black people with political and social power. “I believe it is not only possible, but in fact, easier, to do this, without deciding, or even considering, whether these states have even been out of the Union.” “Let us all join in doing the acts necessary to restoring the proper practical relations between states and the Union,” Lincoln said. Instead, he made a case for stitching the country back together after the Civil War by restoring rebel states to the Union and undoing the evils of slavery. Lee’s recent surrender and the impending end of America’s bloodiest conflict. In the last speech he ever gave, Lincoln could have waxed poetic about Confederate General Robert E. President Abraham Lincoln spoke to an ecstatic crowd at the White House.
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