Plans for Reconstruction

Even before the war ended, Lincoln began planning how to rebuild the Union. His Ten Percent Plan (1863) was deliberately lenient: a southern state could form a new government once just 10 percent of its 1860 voters swore an oath of loyalty to the Union. Many Republicans in Congress thought this was far too easy on states that had just rebelled, and passed the stricter Wade-Davis Bill (1864), requiring a majority of voters to take the loyalty oath; Lincoln refused to sign it, leaving the two sides still disagreeing over how lenient Reconstruction should be when the war ended in April 1865.

Just five days after General Lee's surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865, at Ford's Theatre. Vice President Andrew Johnson became president and pursued an even more lenient "Presidential Reconstruction," pardoning many former Confederate leaders and allowing southern states to pass restrictive Black Codes that limited freed people's rights and reintroduced conditions close to slavery in practice. Furious Republicans in Congress, known as Radical Republicans, took control of Reconstruction themselves starting in 1867 with the Reconstruction Acts, dividing the South into military districts and requiring former Confederate states to guarantee Black men the right to vote before rejoining the Union; the conflict grew so bitter that the House impeached Johnson in 1868, though the Senate failed to convict him by a single vote. Meanwhile, the Freedmen's Bureau, created in 1865, worked across the South providing food, medical care, education, and help negotiating labor contracts and reuniting families separated by slavery.