Southern Reconstruction government was a social, political, and economic experiment that largely failed. For most practical purposes slavery ended with the war, yet emancipation raised new problems that were fully as great. The "Negro Question" centered on the treatment of the African American freedman. Were blacks to be full fledged citizens with rights and privileges equal to those of any other citizen, or a dependent element in the population, free but not equal? The question had to be answered in some fashion as part of the post Civil War peace settlement. Through reconstruction, the North tried to remake the South in its own image.
Besides the "Negro Question," a related question faced by the North was what to do with the South and its white population. In essence, the South was captured territory, but most Northerners disliked the idea of leaving the South under military control indefinitely because this was anathema to democratic traditions in America: "Reconstruction . . . was a crisis laden experience that generated vast quantities of bitterness, hatred and frustrated hope" (Rozwenc vii). President Abraham Lincoln's answer was to organize provisional civilian governments for those states which were substantially under Union occupation. In 1863, Lincoln announced his "Ten Percent Plan" whereby, if as few as ten percent of the men who had been eligible to vote in any Southern state in 1860 took an oath to support the Constitution and the Emancipation Proclamation, they would be permitted to organize a new state government. At the same time he offered a pardon to all former Confederates except the highest leaders. Lincoln's chief objective after winning the war was to get the
South back into the Union as quickly as possible and to end the wartime bitterness on both sides.
In 1865, the picture was bleak for Southerners. As one African American who came South observed, "The war had ruined everything; public buildings wer...