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Circumstances Of Reconstruction

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Circumstances of Reconstruction The Reconstruction of the United States was the best that could have been expected under the circumstances. Because there were no instructions for Reconstruction in the Constitution, the federal government did not have any guidelines to go by when conducting this gradual process. Unfortunately for the people working in the federal government, there were several circumstances that prohibited them from reconstructing the nation the best way possible. These circumstances are events that could not have been prevented or changed. First, was President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. This led to chaos in the federal government about what to do next. Next, Congress battled President Andrew Johnson. He and Congress …show more content…

He had proposed his blueprint for Reconstruction, which included his Ten Percent Plan in 1863. It stated that a southern state could be readmitted into the Union once ten percent of its voters swore an oath of allegiance to the Union. The South needed to be physically reintegrated back into the Union. So, the Ten Percent Plan was a notion of physical reconstruction of the South. And just as it was being debated in Congress, President Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth in 1865. With Lincoln being assassinated, the next man up was Vice President Andrew Johnson. He was a democrat and disagreed with essentially everything Congress decided. Whenever Congress would attempt to legislate Reconstruction, Johnson would veto the regulation. Radical Republicans, who dominated Congress, hated him even before he was President. It is believed that Lincoln could have controlled the Radical Republicans in Congress, but he obviously never got the chance. President Johnson was clearly unable to work with them, as his vetoes were constantly overruled. However, he did the best he could with a Congress that disagreed with him on all accounts. Rather than the federal government working together, the circumstance revealed that they were fighting against each other when the main ideas of Reconstruction weren’t being tended to like they could have if the branches of the government were working together to establish a more perfect Union. Yet, even with all of this fighting, the Freedmen’s Bureau was a great part of Reconstruction that went on for several years. It helped integrate former black slaves into society by giving them education and training them for potential jobs. Also, the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments were all passed to help give African Americans Constitutional rights. These examples were positive aspects of Reconstruction and were able

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