Editing Reconstruction era (section)

==Lincoln's presidential Reconstruction==
{{Abraham Lincoln series}}

===Preliminary events===
[[File:Abraham Lincoln O-77 matte collodion print.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Abraham Lincoln]], 16th [[President of the United States]] (1861–1865)]]

President Lincoln signed two [[Confiscation Acts]] into law, the first on August 6, 1861, and the second on July 17, 1862, safeguarding fugitive slaves who crossed from the Confederacy across Union lines and giving them indirect emancipation if their masters continued insurrection against the United States. The laws allowed the confiscation of lands for colonization from those who aided and supported the rebellion. However, these laws had limited effect as they were poorly funded by Congress and poorly enforced by Attorney General [[Edward Bates]].<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Cimbala |first1=Paul A. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8ZKybV1mPbcC |title=An uncommon time: the Civil War and the northern home front |last2=Miller |first2=Randall M. |publisher=Fordham University Press |year=2002 |isbn=9780823221950 |edition=1st |series=North's Civil War |location=New York |pages=285, 305 |via=Google Books}}</ref>{{sfnp|Wagner|Gallagher|McPherson|2002|pp=735–736}}<ref name="Williams 2006 pp. 54–59">{{Cite book |last=Williams |first=Frank J. |title=The Emancipation Proclamation : three views (social, political, iconographic) |publisher=Louisiana State University Press |year=2006 |isbn=9780807155486 |location=Baton Rouge |pages=54–59 |chapter='Doing Less' and 'Doing More': The President and the Proclamation Legally, Militarily, Politically}}</ref>

In August 1861, Major General [[John C. Frémont]], Union commander of the Western Department, declared martial law in [[Missouri]], confiscated Confederate property, and emancipated their slaves. Lincoln immediately ordered Frémont to rescind his emancipation declaration, stating: "I think there is great danger that{{nbsp}}... the liberating slaves of traitorous owners, will alarm our Southern Union friends, and turn them against us—perhaps ruin our fair prospect for Kentucky." After Frémont refused to rescind the emancipation order, Lincoln terminated him from active duty on November 2, 1861. Lincoln was concerned that the border states would secede from the Union if slaves were given their freedom. On May 26, 1862, Union Major General [[David Hunter]] emancipated slaves in South Carolina, [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]], and Florida, declaring all "persons&nbsp;... heretofore held as slaves{{nbsp}}... forever free". Lincoln, embarrassed by the order, rescinded Hunter's declaration and canceled the emancipation.{{sfnp|Guelzo|1999|pp=[https://archive.org/details/abrahamlincolnre00guel/page/290 290–291]}}

On April 16, 1862, Lincoln signed a bill into law outlawing slavery in Washington, D.C., and freeing the estimated 3,500 slaves in the city. On June 19, 1862, he signed legislation outlawing slavery in all U.S. territories. On July 17, 1862, under the authority of the Confiscation Acts and an amended Force Bill of 1795, he authorized the recruitment of freed slaves into the U.S. Army and seizure of any Confederate property for military purposes.<ref name="Williams 2006 pp. 54–59"/><ref>{{Cite book |last=Trefousse |first=Hans L. |title=Historical Dictionary of Reconstruction |publisher=Greenwood Press |year=1991 |isbn=9780313258626 |location=New York |pages=viiii}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Abraham Lincoln |url=http://blueandgraytrail.com/event/Abraham_Lincoln |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100719122659/http://blueandgraytrail.com/event/Abraham_Lincoln |archive-date=July 19, 2010 |access-date=July 21, 2010 |work=Blue and Gray Trail}}</ref>

===Gradual emancipation and compensation===
In an effort to keep border states in the Union, Lincoln, as early as 1861, designed gradual [[compensated emancipation]] programs paid for by government bonds. Lincoln desired [[Delaware]], [[Maryland]], [[Kentucky]], and [[Missouri]] to "adopt a system of gradual emancipation which should work the extinction of slavery in twenty years". On March 26, 1862, Lincoln met with Senator Charles Sumner and recommended that a special joint session of Congress be convened to discuss giving financial aid to any border states who initiated a [[Gradual emancipation (United States)|gradual emancipation]] plan. In April 1862, the joint session of Congress met; however, the border states were not interested and did not make any response to Lincoln or any congressional emancipation proposal.{{sfnp|Guelzo|1999|pp=[https://archive.org/details/abrahamlincolnre00guel/page/333 333–335]}} Lincoln advocated compensated emancipation during the [[Hampton Roads Conference]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Murphree |first=R. Boyd |date=Summer 2018 |title=Review |url=https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/2629860.0039.208/--our-one-common-country-abraham-lincoln-and-the-hampton-roads?rgn=main;view=fulltext |journal=Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association |volume=39 |issue=2 |issn=1945-7987}}</ref>

===Colonization===
In August 1862, Lincoln met with African American leaders and urged them to colonize some place in [[Central America]]. Lincoln planned to free the Southern slaves in the Emancipation Proclamation and he was concerned that freedmen would not be well treated in the United States by Whites in both the North and South. Although Lincoln gave assurances that the United States government would support and protect any colonies that were established for former slaves, the leaders declined the offer of colonization. Many free Blacks had been opposed to colonization plans in the past because they wanted to remain in the United States. Lincoln persisted in his colonization plan in the belief that emancipation and colonization were both part of the same program. By April 1863, Lincoln was successful in sending Black colonists to [[Haiti]] as well as 453 to [[Chiriquí Province|Chiriqui]] in Central America; however, none of the colonies were able to remain self-sufficient. [[Frederick Douglass]], a prominent 19th-century American [[Civil and political rights|civil rights]] activist, criticized Lincoln by stating that he was "showing all his inconsistencies, his pride of race and blood, his contempt for Negroes and his canting hypocrisy". African Americans, according to Douglass, wanted citizenship and civil rights rather than colonies. Historians are unsure if Lincoln gave up on the idea of African American colonization at the end of 1863 or if he actually planned to continue this policy up until 1865.<ref name="Williams 2006 pp. 54–59"/>{{sfnp|Guelzo|1999|pp=[https://archive.org/details/abrahamlincolnre00guel/page/333 333–335]}}<ref name="Catton 1963 pp. 365–367">{{Cite book |last=Catton |first=Bruce |title=Terrible Swift Sword |publisher=Doubleday |year=1963 |isbn=9780307833068 |series=The Centennial History of the Civil War |volume=2 |location=New York |pages=365–367, 461–468 |oclc=2158762}}</ref>

===Installation of military governors===
Starting in March 1862, in an effort to forestall Reconstruction by the Radicals in Congress, Lincoln installed military governors in certain rebellious states under Union military control.{{sfnp|Guelzo|1999|p=[https://archive.org/details/abrahamlincolnre00guel/page/390 390]}} Although the states would not be recognized by the Radicals until an undetermined time, installation of military governors kept the administration of Reconstruction under presidential control, rather than that of the increasingly unsympathetic Radical Congress. On March 3, 1862, Lincoln installed a loyalist Democrat, Senator Andrew Johnson, as military governor with the rank of brigadier general in his home state of Tennessee.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hall |first=Clifton R. |url=https://archive.org/details/andrewjohnsonmil01hall |title=Andrew Johnson: military governor of Tennessee |publisher=Princeton University Press |year=1916 |page=[https://archive.org/details/andrewjohnsonmil01hall/page/19 19] |oclc=259055353 |access-date=July 24, 2010 |via=Archive.org}}</ref> In May 1862, Lincoln appointed [[Edward Stanly]] military governor of the coastal region of [[North Carolina]] with the rank of brigadier general. Stanly resigned almost a year later when he angered Lincoln by closing two schools for Black children in [[New Bern, North Carolina|New Bern]]. After Lincoln installed Brigadier General [[George Foster Shepley (judge)|George Foster Shepley]] as military governor of Louisiana in May 1862, Shepley sent two anti-slavery representatives, [[Benjamin Flanders]] and [[Michael Hahn]], elected in December 1862, to the House, which capitulated and voted to seat them. In July 1862, Lincoln installed Colonel [[John S. Phelps]] as military governor of Arkansas, though he resigned soon after due to poor health.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Warner |first=Ezra J. |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/book/23721 |title=Generals in Blue: Lives of the Union Commanders |publisher=Louisiana State University Press |year=1964 |isbn=9780807108222 |location=Baton Rouge}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=February 2024}}

===Emancipation Proclamation===
{{Main|Emancipation Proclamation}}
[[File:EmancipationPhoto.jpg|thumb|Celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation in Massachusetts, 1862]]
In July 1862, Lincoln became convinced that "a military necessity" would give him authority under the Constitution to strike at slavery in order to win the Civil War for the Union. The Confiscation Acts were having only a minimal effect to end slavery. On July 22, he wrote a first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation that freed the slaves in states in rebellion. After he showed his Cabinet the document, slight alterations were made in the wording. Lincoln decided that the defeat of the Confederate invasion of the North at the [[Battle of Antietam]] was a sufficient battlefield victory to enable him to release the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which gave the rebels 100 days to return to the Union or the actual proclamation would be issued.<ref>Guelzo (2004), p. 152.</ref>

On January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued the final Emancipation Proclamation, naming ten states in which slaves would be "forever free". The proclamation did not name the states of Tennessee (because it was under Union control) or Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware (because, though slave states, they had not seceded) and specifically excluded numerous counties in some other states. Eventually, as the U.S. Army advanced into the Confederacy, millions of slaves were set free. Many of these freedmen joined the U.S. Army, as the Emancipation Proclamation authorized them to do, and fought in battles against the Confederate forces.<ref name="Williams 2006 pp. 54–59"/><ref name="Catton 1963 pp. 365–367"/>{{sfnp|Guelzo|2004|p=1}} Yet hundreds of thousands of freed slaves died during emancipation from illnesses that devastated army regiments. Freed slaves suffered from smallpox, yellow fever, and malnutrition.{{sfnp|Downs|2012|p=47}}

===Lincoln's 10% plan===
{{Main|Ten percent plan}}
Lincoln was determined to effect a speedy restoration of the Confederate states to the Union after the Civil War. In 1863, he proposed a moderate plan for the Reconstruction of the captured Confederate state of Louisiana. The plan granted amnesty to rebels who took an oath of loyalty to the Union. Black freedmen workers were tied to labor on plantations for one year at a pay rate of $10 a month.{{sfnp|Stauffer|2008|p=279}} Only 10% of the state's electorate had to take the loyalty oath in order for the state to be readmitted into the U.S. Congress. The state was required to abolish slavery in its new state constitution. Identical Reconstruction plans would be adopted in Arkansas and Tennessee. By December 1864, the Lincoln plan of Reconstruction had been enacted in Louisiana and the legislature sent two senators and five representatives to take their seats in Washington. However, Congress refused to count any of the votes from Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee, in essence rejecting Lincoln's moderate Reconstruction plan. Congress, at this time controlled by the Radicals, proposed the Wade–Davis Bill that required a majority of the state electorates to take the oath of loyalty to be admitted to Congress. Lincoln [[pocket veto]]ed the bill and the rift widened between the moderates, primarily concerned with preserving the Union and winning the war, and the Radicals, who wanted to effect a more complete change within Southern society.<ref name="Peterson 1995 pp. 38–41">{{Cite book |last=Peterson |first=Merrill D. |title=Lincoln in American Memory |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1995 |isbn=9780195065701 |location=New York |pages=38–41}}</ref><ref name="McCarthy 1901 p. 76">{{Cite book |last=McCarthy |first=Charles H. |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/56039 |title=Lincoln's plan of Reconstruction |publisher=McClure, Phillips and Co. |year=1901 |location=New York |pages=76 |oclc=4672039 |via=Project Gutenberg}}</ref> Frederick Douglass denounced Lincoln's 10% electorate plan as undemocratic since state admission and loyalty only depended on a minority vote.{{sfnp|Stauffer|2008|p=280}}

===Legalization of slave marriages===
Before 1864, slave marriages had not been recognized legally; emancipation did not affect them.{{sfnp|Jones|2010|p=72}} When freed, many sought official marriages. Before emancipation, slaves could not enter into contracts, including the marriage contract. Not all free people formalized their unions. Some continued to have common-law marriages or community-recognized relationships.<ref name="The Making of the American South">{{cite book |last=Harris |first=J. William |url= |title=The Making of the American South: A Short History 1500–1877 |publisher=Blackwell Publishing |year=2006 |isbn=9780631209638 |location=Malden, Massachusetts |page=240 |doi=10.1002/9780470773338}}</ref> The acknowledgement of marriage by the state increased the state's recognition of freed people as legal actors and eventually helped make the case for parental rights for freed people against the practice of apprenticeship of Black children.<ref name="Gendered Strife and Confusion p53">{{cite book |last=Edwards |first=Laura F. |title=Gendered Strife and Confusion: The Political Culture of Reconstruction |publisher=University of Illinois Press |year=1997 |isbn=978-0-252-02297-5 |location=Chicago |page=53}}</ref> These children were legally taken away from their families under the guise of "providing them with guardianship and 'good' homes until they reached the age of consent at twenty-one" under acts such as the Georgia 1866 Apprentice Act.{{sfnp|Hunter|1997|p=34}} Such children were generally used as sources of unpaid labor.

===Freedmen's Bureau===
{{Main|Freedmen's Bureau}}
[[File:Freedmen richmond sewing women.jpg|thumb|Northern teachers traveled into the South to provide education and training for the newly freed population.]]
On March 3, 1865, the [[Freedmen's Bureau Bill]] became law, sponsored by the Republicans to aid freedmen and White refugees. A federal bureau was created to provide food, clothing, fuel, and advice on negotiating labor contracts. It attempted to oversee new relations between freedmen and their former masters in a free labor market. The act, without deference to a person's color, authorized the bureau to lease confiscated land for a period of three years and to sell it in portions of up to {{convert|40|acres|0|abbr=on}} per buyer. The bureau was to expire one year after the termination of the war. Lincoln was assassinated before he could appoint a commissioner of the bureau.<ref>{{Cite web |title=U.S. Senate: Freedmen's Bureau Acts of 1865 and 1866 |url=https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/FreedmensBureau.htm |access-date=2025-03-05 |website=www.senate.gov}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=The Freedmen's Bureau: New Beginnings for Recently Freed African Americans |url=https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/freedmens-bureau-new-beginnings-recently-freed |access-date=2025-03-05 |website=National Museum of African American History and Culture |language=en}}</ref>

With the help of the bureau, the recently freed slaves began voting, forming political parties, and assuming the control of labor in many areas. The bureau helped to start a change of power in the South that drew national attention from the Republicans in the North to the Democrats in the South. This is especially evident in the [[1868 United States presidential election|election]] between Grant and Seymour (Johnson did not get the Democratic nomination), where almost 700,000 Black voters voted and swayed the election 300,000 votes in Grant's favor.{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}}

Even with the benefits that it gave to the freedmen, the Freedmen's Bureau was unable to operate effectively in certain areas. Terrorizing freedmen for trying to vote, hold a political office, or own land, the Ku Klux Klan was the nemesis of the Freedmen's Bureau.<ref>{{cite web |last=Mikkelson |first=Barbara |date=May 27, 2011 |title='Black Tax' Credit |url=https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/black-tax-credit/ |work=[[Snopes]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite encyclopedia |title=Freedmen's Bureau |encyclopedia=[[Tennessee Encyclopedia]] |url=http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.php?rec=517 |access-date=April 29, 2010 |last=Zebley |first=Kathleen |date=October 8, 2017}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Belz |first=Herman |title=Abraham Lincoln, Constitutionalism, and Equal Rights in the Civil War Era |publisher=Fordham University Press |year=1998 |isbn=9780823217694 |series=North's Civil War |volume=2 |location=New York |pages=138, 141, 145}}</ref>

===Bans color discrimination===
Other legislation was signed that broadened equality and rights for African Americans. Lincoln outlawed discrimination on account of color, in carrying U.S. mail, in riding on public street cars in Washington, D.C., and in pay for soldiers.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Rawley |first=James A. |title=Abraham Lincoln and a nation worth fighting for |publisher=University of Nebraska Press |year=2003 |isbn=9780803289949 |location=Lincoln |pages=205}}</ref>

===February 1865 peace conference===
{{main|Hampton Roads Conference}}
Lincoln and Secretary of State [[William H. Seward]] met with three Southern representatives to discuss the peaceful Reconstruction of the Union and the Confederacy on February 3, 1865, in [[Hampton Roads, Virginia|Hampton Roads]], Virginia. The Southern delegation included Confederate Vice President [[Alexander H. Stephens]], [[John Archibald Campbell]], and [[Robert M. T. Hunter]]. The Southerners proposed the Union recognition of the Confederacy, a joint Union–Confederate attack on Mexico to oust Emperor [[Maximilian I of Mexico|Maximilian I]], and an alternative subordinate status of servitude for Blacks rather than slavery. Lincoln flatly rejected recognition of the Confederacy, and said that the slaves covered by his Emancipation Proclamation would not be re-enslaved. He said that the Union states were about to pass the Thirteenth Amendment, outlawing slavery. Lincoln urged the governor of Georgia to remove Confederate troops and "ratify this constitutional amendment {{em|prospectively}}, so as to take effect—say in five years... Slavery is doomed." Lincoln also urged compensated emancipation for the slaves as he thought the North should be willing to share the costs of freedom. Although the meeting was cordial, the parties did not settle on agreements.{{sfnp|McFeely|2002|pp=198–207}}

===Historical legacy debated===
Lincoln continued to advocate his Louisiana Plan as a model for all states up until his assassination on April 15, 1865. The plan successfully started the Reconstruction process of ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment in all states. Lincoln is typically portrayed as taking the moderate position and fighting the Radical positions. There is considerable debate on how well Lincoln, had he lived, would have handled Congress during the Reconstruction process that took place after the Civil War ended. One historical camp argues that Lincoln's flexibility, pragmatism, and superior political skills with Congress would have solved Reconstruction with far less difficulty. The other camp believes that the Radicals would have attempted to impeach Lincoln, just as they did to his successor, Andrew Johnson, in 1868.{{sfnp|Harris|1997|p={{page needed|date=October 2021}}}}<ref name="Peterson 1995 pp. 38–41"/>