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The ten percent plan, formally the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction (13 Stat. 737), was a United States presidential proclamation issued on December 8, 1863, by United States President Abraham Lincoln, during the American Civil War.
The first plan for legal reconstruction was introduced by Lincoln in his Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, the so-called "ten percent plan" under which a loyal unionist state government would be established when ten percent of its 1860 voters pledged an oath of allegiance to the Union, with a complete pardon for those who pledged such ...
On December 8, 1863, in his annual message to Congress, President Lincoln outlined his plans for reconstruction of the South, which included terms for amnesty to former Confederates. A pardon would require an oath of allegiance, but it would not restore ownership to former slaves, or restore confiscated property which involved a third party.
The Wade–Davis Bill emerged from a plan introduced in the Senate by Ira Harris of New York in February, 1863. [2]It was written by two Radical Republicans, Senator Benjamin Wade of Ohio and Representative Henry Winter Davis of Maryland, and proposed to base the Reconstruction of the South on the federal government's power to guarantee a republican form of government.
In 1863, Lincoln proposed the Ten percent plan, which suggested that this same oath apply to 10% Southern voters as part of Reconstruction. Congress then attempted to apply the oath to 51% of Southern voters in the Wade–Davis Bill of 1864 but was pocket vetoed by President Abraham Lincoln.
Lincoln, on the contrary, said that only individuals, not states, had rebelled. [99] In July 1864, Stevens pushed Lincoln to sign the Wade–Davis Bill, which required at least half of prewar voters to sign an oath of loyalty for a state to gain readmission. Lincoln, who advocated his more lenient ten percent plan, pocket vetoed it. [100]
Lincoln later recognized McClellan as unfit and relieved him of his command. The Radicals tried passing their own Reconstruction plan through Congress in 1864. Lincoln vetoed it, as he was putting his own policy in effect through his power as military commander-in-chief. Lincoln was assassinated in April 1865. [8]
Lincoln announced a Reconstruction plan that involved short-term military control, pending readmission under the control of southern Unionists. [ 286 ] Historians agree that it is impossible to predict how Reconstruction would have proceeded had Lincoln lived.