LINCOLN, JOHNSON AND RECONSTRUCTION This resear

This research paper compares and contrasts the approaches of Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson to Reconstruction in the defeated Southern states after the Civil War. Reconstruction was an enormously complex task because of the intense passions aroused by the war, the suffering and physical damage caused in the South during it and the many difficulties inherent in attempting to restore the Union while at the same time accomplishing the war aims of the North, which included giving real legal, political and economic substance to emancipation of the former black slaves.

Lincoln's views on slavery and its abolition as well as on the status of blacks in American society matured considerably before and especially during the war. At the time of his death, he had become committed in principle to improving the lot of the black freedmen in many spheres and was prepared to use federal power as required to carry out that commitment. He was, however, a political pragmatist who was interested in workable and lasting solutions to race relations and would not have supported Radical Republican efforts to effect a revolutionary transformation of Southern society. Johnson believed in white supremacy and states' rights. His approach to Reconstruction amounted to acquiescence in the resurrection of much of the antebellum white power structure and the abandonment of blacks to local control and violence. His policies were implemented in an inflexible and unyielding manner which dr

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nstruction Acts of 1867. He suggested to Governor Michael Hahn of Louisiana in a private letter in February 1864 that he favored letting "the very intelligent, and especially those who have fought gallantly in the ranks" have the vote (Huggins 108). During the winter of 1864-1865, he used his influence in Congress to block legislation which would grant the franchise to blacks in the South other than veterans (McPherson Battle Cry 843). To serenaders at the White House on April 11, 1865, he reiterated for the first time publicly that he favored granting the franchise to "very intelligent" blacks and to blacks "who serve our cause as soldiers" and expressed the hope that would happen in states other than just Louisiana (Oates 143). No one knows how Lincoln would have dealt with this issue if he had lived. Huggins said that Douglass believed that "Lincoln would not have been an advocate of suffrage for the freedmen" (103). McPherson believes that Lincoln would have eventually supported universal black suffrage because "he had moved steadily leftward during the war, from no emancipation to limited emancipation with colonization and then to universal emancipation with limited suffrage" (Battle Cry 844). Oates said Lincoln at his deat

Category: History - L