Reconstruction of the United States after the Civil War essays

Reconstruction of the United States after the Civil War essays The Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 freed African Americans in rebel states, and after the Civil War, the Thirteenth Amendment emancipated all U.S. slaves wherever they were. As a result of this free African Americans faced the problem of hostile whites around them preventing them to prosper. Despite the defeat of the Confederacy the nation was still unprepared to deal with the question of full citizenship for its newly freed black population. The Reconstruction was the time after the Civil War (1865-1877) when the United States was reorganizing the southern states and providing the means to accepting them back to the Union. Also to define how whites and blacks could live together, peacefully. These two major problems were placed on the weight of the soldiers of Andrew Johnson. Johnson became president after Abraham Lincoln. He was born in to a poor family, so he taught himself how to read and married a wife who taught him how to write. Before his presidency, he was the only senator from a confederate state to remain loyal to the Union. He hated wealthy slave owners. Before Abraham Lincolns assassination, he made it clear that he wanted a lenient Reconstruction plan. In December 1863, he announced his Proclamation of Amnesty which is also known as the Ten-Percent Plan. Lincoln's Reconstruction plan was designed to make an easy, peaceful reentry of the former Confederate states into the Union. Lincoln's policy was to forgive the South, rather than to punish them. Lincoln's Ten-Percent Plan allowed the former Confederate states to rejoin the Union when ten percent of the voters declared their loyalty to the Union. Lincoln's plan would let white southerners control the reconstruction process. Under this plan, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Virginia came back to the Union. Lincoln wanted to let plantation owners keep their property, rather than divide up plantation property and give the land to former slaves. Lincoln's p...