Lincoln's vs. Johnson's Plans for Reconstruction

Johnson's Plans for Reconstruction (Presidential Reconstruction)

He returned confiscated property to white southerners He issued hundreds of pardons to former Confederate officers and government officials He undermined the Freedmen's Bureau by ordering it to return all confiscated lands to white landowners Johnson also appointed governors to supervise the drafting of new state constitutions and agreed to readmit each state provided it ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery.

Lincoln's Plan for Reconstruction (Ten Percent Plan)

Lincoln's blueprint for Reconstruction included the Ten-Percent Plan, which specified that a southern state could be readmitted into the Union once 10 percent of its voters (from the voter rolls for the election of 1860) swore an oath of allegiance to the Union Voters could then elect delegates to draft revised state constitutions and establish new state governments All southerners except for high-ranking Confederate army officers and government officials would be granted a full pardon Guaranteed southerners that he would protect their private property, though not their slaves.

Lincoln's beliefs

Wanted to end the war quickly He feared that a prolonged war would lose public support and that the North and South would never be reunited if the fighting did not stop quickly Did not want to punish southerners or reorganize southern society His actions indicate that he wanted Reconstruction to be a short process in which secessionist states could draft new constitutions as swiftly as possible so that the United States could exist as it had before

Johnson's beliefs

preferred a stronger state government and that states' rights took precedence over federal believed in the doctrine of laissez- faire , that the federal government should stay out of the economic and social affairs of its people He rejected all Radical Republican attempts to dissolve the plantation system, reorganize the southern economy, and protect the civil rights of blacks