LINCOLN'S PLAN OF RECONSTRUCTION (1863)

By 1863, President abraham lincoln adopted policies that affected reconstruction in some of the seceded states. He appointed military governors in Louisiana, Tennessee, and North Carolina and recognized the provisional government of Virginia. The emancipation proclamation took effect on January 1, 1863.

Lincoln issued his Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction on December 8, 1863. In it, he offered amnesty to all participants in the rebellion, except high-ranking military and civilian officers. He announced his intention to appoint a military governor in each occupied state and to require each occupied state to accept all extant and future policy concerning slavery and emancipation. But otherwise Lincoln's policy was conservative. It assumed preservation of the states' boundaries, constitutions, and laws (except those relating to slavery) and required neither black suffrage nor confiscation. Lincoln proposed to recreate an enfranchised citizenry in each state by requiring all persons to take an oath of future loyalty and support of the laws. When ten percent of a state's 1860 voters had taken the oath, they could reorganize the state's government.

The President's authority to recreate loyal state governments derived from several provisions of Article II, including his powers as commander-in-chief, his pardoning power, and his duty to see to the faithful execution of the laws. But, as with his earlier actions in calling for volunteers and suspending habeas corpus, Lincoln had to make the most of a document that had not contemplated secession, civil war, or Reconstruction.

Though Arkansas and Louisiana complied with Lincoln's terms, Congress refused to seat their representatives. Lincoln and Congress clashed over the more stringent congressional plan of Reconstruction embodied in the wadedavis bill of 1864. President andrew johnson later pursued Reconstruction policies similar to Lincoln's.

William M. Wiecek
(1986)

Bibliography

Belz, Herman 1969 Reconstructing the Union: Theory and Policy During the Civil War. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.