Reconstruction

//**Aim: Should the Union punish or rebuild the South, for the Civil War?**// __ Background: __ As a result of the Civil War, the South lost a fourth of its white male population of military age, a third of its livestock, half of its farm machinery, and $2.5 billion worth of human property. Factories and railroads had been destroyed, and such cities as Atlanta, Charleston, Columbia, and Richmond had been largely burned to the ground. In South Carolina, the value of property plunged from $400 million in 1860, ranking it third in the nation, to just $50 million in 1865.

__Reconstruction:__ As soon as the Civil War ended, **Reconstruction** began. **Reconstruction was the process of reuniting the nation and rebuilding the southern states.**

President Lincoln proposed that southerners be offered, an official pardon. Southerners has to swear an oath to loyalty to the United Statesand accept the ban on slavery. **When 10 percent of the voters in any state took the oath, that state could be accepted back into the Union.** This was called the **Ten Percent Plan.**

Questions


 * 1) What was reconstruction?

2. What was the Ten Percent Plan?

Some supported the **Wade-Davis Bill** instead. The **procedure** of the Wade-Davis Bill asked southerners to ban slavery. However under this bill, most of the people of a state would have to take the pledge before the state could rejoin theUnion. Also, only southerners who swore they had never supported the Confederacy could run for office.Lincoln vetoed it.

3. What did the Ten Percent Plan and the Wade-Davis Bill have in common?

__Help for African Americans:__
 * In 1865 the 13th Amendment to the Constitution officially outlawed slavery in the nation.** Former slaves reacted to freedom in many ways. They legalized their marriages, searched for relatives who had been sold, took last names, and moved to new places.

4. What part of the Constitution granted freedom to all slaves?

To help the South’s poor and freed people Congress created the **Freedmen’s Bureau** in 1865. On of its roles was to build more schools. Some freed people also established their own schools. Although some southerners violently resisted the idea of education African Americans, freed people of all ages attended classes.

5. Why would southerners oppose the education of African Americans?

__Lincoln's Death and President Johnson:__ On April 14, 1865, President Lincoln was shot while attending the theater. He died the next morning. Vice President **Andrew Johnson** became the next President. Johnson’s Reconstruction plan included a way to restructure southerner state governments. States that followed the steps were to be readmitted to theUnion.

Most of the southern states followed Johnson’s plan, but Congress refused to accept them back into theUnion. Many of the elected representatives of the “new” states had been Confederate leaders. Clearly there were still problems to be solved.

6. Why did Congress refuse to accept the southern states back into theUnion?

7. If you were President Johnson would you help rebuild the South? Why or Why not?

Homework: Analyzing Political Cartoon "Lincoln Rebuilds the Union"