Eighth Grade Social Studies: Presidential versus Congressional Reconstruction Plans

The conclusion of the Civil War plunged the United States into Reconstruction (1865–1877), an intense constitutional and political struggle over how to readmit eleven defeated Confederate states to the Union and define the civil and political rights of four million newly emancipated African Americans.

The Constitutional and Political Dilemma of Reconstruction

With the military collapse of the Confederacy in the spring of 1865, the United States faced profound questions that the Constitution did not explicitly answer:
1. The Nature of Secession: Had the Confederate states actually left the American Union, or was secession legally impossible?
- If states could not legally secede—as Abraham Lincoln insisted—then the southern states had simply been in an unlawful insurrection. Therefore, restoring them to their proper constitutional relationship was primarily an executive function involving presidential pardons and enforcement of federal law. - If secession had effectively severed their constitutional bonds—as Radical Republicans in Congress argued—then the southern states had reverted to the status of conquered foreign provinces or unorganized territories. Under Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution, Congress had exclusive authority to govern federal territories and establish rules for state admission.
2. The Status of the Freedpeople: What was the legal status of the four million formerly enslaved people? Were they merely free from physical chattel bondage, or were they entitled to full political equality, civil rights, land ownership, and the right to vote?

3. Punishment versus Reconciliation: Should former Confederate political and military leaders be tried for treason, disenfranchised, and stripped of property, or should they be granted swift clemency to heal national wounds?


                  THE CONSTITUTIONAL PUZZLE OF RECONSTRUCTION
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| PRESIDENTIAL VIEW (Lincoln / Johnson):                          |
| - States never legally left the Union; individuals rebelled.    |
| - Executive branch possesses power of pardon and amnesty.       |
| - Goal: Rapid restoration; minimal federal interference.        |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
                                VS.
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| CONGRESSIONAL RADICAL VIEW (Sumner / Stevens):                  |
| - States committed "state suicide" or became "conquered prov."  |
| - Congress holds sole constitutional power over territories.    |
| - Goal: Thorough social transformation; Black voting rights;    |
|   dismantle southern planter aristocracy before readmission.    |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+

Lincoln's Moderate Approach: The Ten Percent Plan

Long before the fighting ceased, President Abraham Lincoln began formulating plans to reconstruct the South. In December 1863, Lincoln issued the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, popularly known as the Ten Percent Plan.

Lincoln’s primary goal was to bring a swift, painless end to the war by enticing moderate white southerners to abandon the Confederate cause and establish loyal state governments. His plan featured two core components:
1. Presidential Pardon and Amnesty: A full presidential pardon would be granted to all white southerners (except high-ranking Confederate military officers and political officials) who swore an oath of future allegiance to the United States Constitution and pledged to accept the abolition of slavery.

2. The Ten Percent Threshold: As soon as ten percent of the number of voters who had cast ballots in the presidential election of 1860 in any given state took this oath, that state could establish a new loyal state government, draft a revised state constitution abolishing slavery, and send representatives back to Congress.


Under Lincoln’s policy, loyal governments were quickly formed during the war in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee. However, Lincoln’s plan did not require these states to grant civil equality or voting rights to emancipated African Americans, though in April 1865 Lincoln privately suggested to Louisiana’s governor that educated Black citizens and Union army veterans should be given the ballot.

Congressional Opposition: The Wade-Davis Bill (1864)

Radical Republicans in Congress, led by Representative Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania and Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, were appalled by Lincoln’s Ten Percent Plan. They viewed it as a dangerous and dangerously lenient scheme that would return the unrepentant planter aristocracy to power while leaving vulnerable freedpeople at the mercy of their former enslavers.

In July 1864, Congress passed its own blueprint for Reconstruction: the Wade-Davis Bill, sponsored by Senator Benjamin Wade of Ohio and Representative Henry Winter Davis of Maryland. The bill imposed far more stringent conditions:
- Majority Requirement: A majority (fifty percent or more) of all adult white males in a seceded state had to take an oath of allegiance before a constitutional convention could be called.

- The "Ironclad Oath": To vote for or serve as a delegate to the state constitutional convention, an individual had to take an "Ironclad Oath" swearing that they had never voluntarily borne arms against the United States or aided the Confederate rebellion.

- Permanent Disenfranchisement: All former high-ranking Confederate officials were permanently barred from voting or holding public office.


Lincoln recognized that the Wade-Davis Bill would make it impossible to restore southern state governments before the end of the war, as few southern white men could honestly swear the Ironclad Oath. Lincoln used a pocket veto to kill the bill by allowing the congressional session to expire without signing it. The furious authors published the Wade-Davis Manifesto, accusing Lincoln of presidential usurpation, exposing a bitter rift between the executive and legislative branches.

                  PRESIDENTIAL VS. EARLY CONGRESSIONAL PLANS
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| LINCOLN'S TEN PERCENT PLAN (1863)                               |
| - 10% of 1860 voters take future loyalty oath                   |
| - Accept abolition of slavery                                   |
| - Lenient presidential pardons for rank-and-file                |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
                                ||
                                v (Pocket Vetoed)
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| WADE-DAVIS BILL (1864)                                          |
| - 50% majority of white males take oath                         |
| - "Ironclad Oath" of PAST loyalty required to vote/govern       |
| - Complete exclusion of Confederate leaders                     |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+

Presidential Reconstruction Under Andrew Johnson (1865)

When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865, Vice President Andrew Johnson assumed the presidency. Born into grinding poverty in North Carolina and working as a tailor in eastern Tennessee before entering politics, Johnson was a self-made Jacksonian Democrat. He was the only sitting southern senator who refused to secede with his state in 1861, winning widespread northern praise for his fierce Unionism.

Radical Republicans initially celebrated Johnson’s elevation, remembering his fiery wartime declarations that "treason must be made odious and traitors must be punished and impoverished." However, they fundamentally misunderstood Johnson’s character and racial ideology:
- Johnson had intense class hatred for the wealthy southern planter aristocracy, but he held deep, virulent racial prejudices against African Americans.

- Johnson was a rigid champion of states' rights and strict constitutional construction. He believed that once slavery was abolished, the federal government had zero constitutional authority to dictate voting rights, civil equality, or economic policies within southern states.

- Johnson candidly declared: "White men alone must manage the South."


Johnson's Lenient Restoration Policy

In May 1865, with Congress adjourned for the summer, Johnson launched his own Reconstruction policy by executive decree, bypassing Congress entirely. Johnson’s terms were even more lenient than Lincoln’s:
1. Blanket Amnesty: Johnson issued a general amnesty to all southern whites who took a simple loyalty oath, restoring all property rights except in enslaved people.

2. Wealthy Planter Exception and Personal Pardons: Confederates who had held high civil or military office, and any southern landowner whose taxable property was valued at over $20,000, were excluded from blanket amnesty. However, they were invited to apply directly to Johnson for individual presidential pardons. Intoxicated by the spectacle of proud plantation aristocrats groveling before a former illiterate tailor, Johnson issued more than 13,000 individual presidential pardons by the end of 1865.

3. Restoration of Statehood: Johnson appointed provisional governors to summon state constitutional conventions. States were required only to revoke their ordinances of secession, repudiate Confederate war debts, and ratify the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery.


Under Johnson’s lax oversight, the southern states formed governments that looked virtually identical to the pre-war Confederate hierarchy. Southern voters elected prominent former Confederate generals, colonels, and cabinet ministers to public office, including Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, who was elected to the United States Senate from Georgia while still awaiting trial for treason.

Worse, these newly formed state governments immediately enacted the Black Codes—repressive state statutes designed to reduce emancipated African Americans to a state of semi-slavery through vagrancy laws, labor contracts, and the denial of basic civil rights.

                  ANDREW JOHNSON'S RECONSTRUCTION (1865)
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| - Executive decree while Congress in recess (May-Dec 1865)      |
| - Over 13,000 individual pardons granted to planter elites      |
| - Required only: nullify secession, repudiate debt, ratify 13th |
| - RESULT: Former Confederate leaders elected to Congress;       |
|   draconian BLACK CODES enacted across the South.               |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+

Congressional Backlash: The Radical Transformation (1866)

When the Thirty-Ninth Congress convened in Washington in December 1865, northern representatives were furious. Men who had spent four years leading an armed rebellion against the United States walked into the Capitol wearing their Confederate battle ribbons, expecting to take their seats in Congress.

Under the leadership of Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner, northern congressmen exercised their constitutional authority under Article I, Section 5 ("Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members") and refused to seat the newly elected southern senators and representatives. Congress shut the door on Johnson’s reconstructed governments and established the Joint Committee on Reconstruction to investigate conditions in the South.

In early 1866, moderate and radical Republicans united to pass two landmark bills to protect freedpeople:
1. The Freedmen's Bureau Bill (1866): Extended the life and expanded the legal authority of the federal agency providing food, education, and legal protection to freedpeople and white refugees.

2. The Civil Rights Act of 1866: The first federal civil rights bill in American history, declaring that all persons born in the United States (except untaxed Native Americans) were national citizens entitled to full and equal benefit of all laws, explicitly outlawing the Black Codes.


President Andrew Johnson stunned the nation by vetoing both bills, asserting that granting civil rights to Black people was unconstitutional and an insult to white southerners. In April 1866, Congress achieved an unprecedented milestone by overriding Johnson’s veto of the Civil Rights Act with a two-thirds majority—the first time in American history that Congress had overridden a presidential veto on a major piece of civil rights legislation. Moderates broke completely with Johnson, joining the Radicals to take absolute control of Reconstruction policy.

                  THE EXECUTIVE-LEGISLATIVE SHOWDOWN (1866)
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| CONGRESS PASSES: Freedmen's Bureau Extension & Civil Rights Act |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
                                |
                                v
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| JOHNSON VETOES: Denounces federal protection of Black rights    |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
                                |
                                v
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| HISTORIC TWO-THIRDS OVERRIDE: Congress wrests control of policy |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+

Radical Reconstruction: The Reconstruction Acts of 1867

In the autumn midterm elections of 1866, Johnson embarked on a disastrous speaking tour known as the "Swing Around the Circle," engaging in undignified shouting matches with crowds and accusing Republican leaders of treason. Northern voters resoundingly repudiated Johnson, granting Republicans an overwhelming veto-proof two-thirds supermajority in both houses of Congress.

Empowered by this public mandate, Congress dismantled Johnson’s southern governments and enacted the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 (passed over Johnson’s vetoes), initiating the era of Radical (or Congressional) Reconstruction:

  1. Military Division: The ten unreconstructed southern states (Tennessee had already ratified the Fourteenth Amendment and been readmitted) were declared without legal governments and divided into five military districts, each commanded by a Union army general backed by federal troops.
  2. Universal Male Suffrage: To be readmitted to the Union, southern states were required to hold new constitutional conventions whose delegates were elected by all adult male citizens—Black and white alike.
  3. Disenfranchisement of Confederate Leaders: Former Confederate officials who had violated an oath to the United States Constitution were barred from voting or participating in the conventions.
  4. Ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment: New state constitutions had to guarantee voting rights for African American men, and the state legislatures had to formally ratify the Fourteenth Amendment granting citizenship and equal protection of the laws.
                  THE FIVE MILITARY DISTRICTS (1867)
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| DISTRICT 1: Virginia (Gen. John Schofield)                      |
| DISTRICT 2: North Carolina & South Carolina (Gen. Dan Sickles)  |
| DISTRICT 3: Georgia, Alabama & Florida (Gen. John Pope)         |
| DISTRICT 4: Mississippi & Arkansas (Gen. E.O.C. Ord)            |
| DISTRICT 5: Louisiana & Texas (Gen. Philip Sheridan)            |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+

The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson (1868)

Determined to prevent President Johnson from sabotaging the enforcement of the Reconstruction Acts through his role as Commander-in-Chief, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act in March 1867. The statute prohibited the president from removing any cabinet official who had been appointed with Senate approval without first obtaining the consent of the Senate. The law was designed specifically to protect Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, a staunch Radical ally who oversaw the military districts.

Believing the Tenure of Office Act was an unconstitutional infringement on executive power, Johnson deliberately violated the statute in February 1868 by firing Stanton and replacing him with General Lorenzo Thomas. Stanton barricaded himself inside his War Department office, refusing to leave.

Three days later, on February 24, 1868, the House of Representatives voted 126 to 47 to impeach Andrew Johnson for "high crimes and misdemeanors," marking the first presidential impeachment in American history. The House adopted eleven articles of impeachment, primarily focusing on Johnson's violation of the Tenure of Office Act and his public speeches denouncing Congress.

In the spring of 1868, the Senate conducted a dramatic eleven-week trial presided over by Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase. Johnson's defense lawyers astutely argued that because Stanton had been appointed by Lincoln during his first term, Stanton was not protected by the Tenure of Office Act. Furthermore, moderate Republicans worried about setting a dangerous constitutional precedent where Congress could remove a president simply over policy disagreements, especially since the next in line for the presidency under existing succession law was radical Senate President Pro Tempore Benjamin Wade.

On May 16 and May 26, 1868, the Senate voted on three articles of impeachment. In each vote, thirty-five senators voted "Guilty" and nineteen voted "Not Guilty." The prosecution fell one single vote short of the two-thirds supermajority required for conviction and removal from office. Seven moderate Republicans—most famously Senator Edmund G. Ross of Kansas—broke party lines to vote for acquittal. Although Johnson was acquitted, his political power was permanently broken. He served out the remaining ten months of his presidency in complete impotence as General Ulysses S. Grant swept to victory in the presidential election of 1868.

Chapter Exercises

Exercise 1: Explain the fundamental constitutional disagreement between Abraham Lincoln and Radical Republicans regarding whether Confederate states had legally seceded from the Union.

Exercise 2: Contrast the terms of Abraham Lincoln's Ten Percent Plan with the provisions of the Wade-Davis Bill of 1864, explaining why Lincoln pocket-vetoed the congressional measure.

Exercise 3: Analyze the factors that made Andrew Johnson's Presidential Reconstruction policy in 1865 so lenient, detailing how white southerners responded to his restoration terms.

Exercise 4: Outline the four primary components of the Reconstruction Acts of 1867, explaining how they established Radical (Congressional) Reconstruction.

Exercise 5: Describe the events leading to the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson in 1868, detailing the role of the Tenure of Office Act and the final Senate vote.

Solutions and Explanations

Solution 1: Lincoln insisted that the Union was perpetual and that secession was legally impossible; therefore, individual southern citizens had rebelled, but the states remained within the Union. Consequently, restoring normal relations was an executive function of presidential pardons. In contrast, Radical Republicans argued that by waging war, the southern states had committed "state suicide" and reverted to conquered provinces or unorganized territories. Under the Constitution, Congress had exclusive authority to govern territories and dictate terms for state admission.

Solution 2: Lincoln's Ten Percent Plan allowed a southern state to form a loyal government when just ten percent of its 1860 voters took an oath of future loyalty and accepted emancipation. The Wade-Davis Bill required a fifty percent majority of white adult males to take an oath, required an "Ironclad Oath" of past loyalty to vote or govern, and permanently disenfranchised Confederate leaders. Lincoln pocket-vetoed the bill because requiring an Ironclad Oath would make forming loyal governments impossible during the war.

Solution 3: Johnson held deep racial prejudices, believed in strict states' rights, and held that the federal government had no authority over state voting or social systems. He granted blanket amnesty to ordinary southerners and issued over 13,000 personal pardons to wealthy planters. White southerners responded by electing prominent Confederate leaders to state offices and Congress, and immediately enacting Black Codes to subordinate freedpeople to plantation labor.

Solution 4: The Reconstruction Acts of 1867: first, divided ten southern states into five military districts commanded by Union generals; second, required states to draft new constitutions granting universal male suffrage (voting rights for Black men); third, disenfranchised former Confederate leaders who had violated federal oaths; and fourth, mandated ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment granting citizenship and equal protection before readmission.

Solution 5: Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act to stop Johnson from firing Radical cabinet members without Senate approval. In February 1868, Johnson fired Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to challenge the law. The House impeached Johnson for high crimes and misdemeanors. In May 1868, after an eleven-week trial, the Senate voted 35 to 19 to convict, falling one vote short of the two-thirds majority required for removal, as seven moderate Republicans broke ranks to prevent executive disruption.