6.1 Introduction

When the Civil War ended, parts of the South resembled a wasteland. Much of it lay in ruins. Homes, crops, and railroads had been destroyed, farming and business had come to a standstill, and many uprooted southerners wandered about trying to find anything that looked or felt familiar. The entire southern way of life was gone and the future was uncertain. The question on everyone’s minds politically was how would the states be brought back into the Union? Were they conquered enemies or equal states? How would state governments be rebuilt? What about the economy and social systems? Would Confederate leaders be punished for treason? Would their property be confiscated and their political rights curtailed? What rights did freedpeople now enjoy and what was their citizenship status? The questions the federal government faced in 1865 were, therefore, unprecedented, and who would control reconstructing the Union was another thorny issue.

At the end of the war there was a large northern presence in the South: 200,000 federal troops occupied the former Confederacy. Northern journalists and officials also ventured south to investigate conditions and assess the former rebels. In previous wars, the mood of the vanquished had rarely, if ever, concerned victors. The Civil War was a special case though, for the Union sought not merely victory but the return of national unity.

The end of the Civil War posed two problems that had to be solved simultaneously: how to readmit the South to the Union and what status the freedpeople would have in American society. Conflict over Reconstruction began even before the war ended. In December 1863, President Lincoln issued the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, which outlined a path by which each southern state could rejoin the Union. This came to be called Lincoln’s Ten Percent Plan, as only 10% of eligible voters were required to pledge allegiance to the Union and accept emancipation of slaves in order to regain statehood.