Wednesday, October 14, 2015

How did the Wade-Davis Bill's plan for reconstruction differ from Lincoln's Ten Percent Plan?

The Wade-Davis Plan was more punitive in its proposed treatment of the defeated Confederacy. Lincoln's Ten Percent Plan, announced in response to the need to figure out how to reconstruct some Southern states already under occupation, basically only required that ten percent of people in a state who were eligible to vote in 1860 would swear allegiance to the Union, and that this state would have to recognize the abolition of slavery. Once this happened, the state became eligible for readmission to the Union. The Wade-Davis Bill, a direct response to the Ten Percent Plan, stipulated that half of the voters in the state had to take a loyalty oath, and that black men should not only be free, but be allowed to vote. This was obviously a far higher standard than Lincoln had established, and in some ways anticipated the conflicts between the Congress and the President that would characterize the early years of postwar Reconstruction.

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