Unit 9: Reconstruction Era

1865-1890

Two Plans for Reconstruction

Reconstruction Lesson Plan | Grades 7-12

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After the Civil War ended in 1865, the country was in ruins and faced the enormous task of putting itself back together. The South had lost roughly 60% of its total wealth in four years, and the devastation was staggering.

Start with the railroads – the lifeblood of any 19th-century economy. Over 9,000 miles of track, representing about half of all the railroad lines in the South, were destroyed or so badly damaged they were practically useless. Hundreds of bridges had been blown up, and major cities like Atlanta, Columbia, and Richmond had been leveled, reduced to burnt-out shells.

Sherman's march to the sea was designed to break the South's will to fight, and the agricultural economy that the South had built its entire identity around had collapsed completely. Cotton production plummeted from 4.5 million bales in 1861 to a pathetic 300,000 bales by 1865. Plantations sat abandoned, fields went unplanted, and an estimated 40% of the South's horses and mules – the “machinery” that made 19th century farming possible – were dead. Economists estimated it would cost over a billion dollars to rebuild the South, and that was in 1865 money, an almost incomprehensible amount today.

But here's the thing – you can rebuild railroads and replant fields. The human cost was something else entirely. Over 620,000 Americans were dead, roughly 2% of the entire population. If the same percentage died today, we'd be looking at over 6 million people gone. Hundreds of thousands more came home maimed or disabled, and this was an era when losing a leg meant a lifetime of struggle with basically no support system. Then there were the four million people who'd been enslaved and were suddenly free, but free with absolutely nothing – no home, no money, no education. Over 90% couldn't read or write because teaching slaves had been illegal in most Southern states. Where do you even start rebuilding a life from that?

Big questions needed to be answered and fast. Eleven Confederate states had to get back into the Union somehow. Should rebel leaders be punished or pardoned? What rights would formerly enslaved people actually get - just freedom on paper, or the vote, land, and real opportunities? Two completely different visions for America's future were about to collide, and the decisions made over the next few years would shape race relations for over a century.

Ruins of Richmond, Virginia

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Lincoln's Reconstruction Plan

On April 14, 1865, just days after Lee's surrender at Appomattox, John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre. Lincoln died the next morning, and with him died any real chance of reconstruction going smoothly. Lincoln had been trying to figure out how to bring the country back together without just letting the South off the hook. But he also wanted reconstruction to happen as quickly as possible.

Lincoln's approach, the "Ten Percent Plan," gave Confederate states a way back into the Union if they did three things. Just 10% of a state's voting population from 1860 had to swear loyalty to the Union - a pretty low bar that was meant to make reunion easier. The state had to accept that slavery was over by ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment. And they had to write new state constitutions. There was one more catch though - former Confederate officials were barred from holding any government office, which meant the people who'd led the rebellion couldn't just walk right back into power. By the time Lincoln was shot, the plan was working. Arkansas, Louisiana, and Tennessee had already come back under these terms.

But Lincoln wasn't naive. He knew you couldn't just end slavery and walk away. That's why he backed the creation of the Freedmen's Bureau, a government agency that actually had some teeth. The Bureau handed out food and shelter to African-Americans who'd been displaced by the war. It set up schools and hired teachers for people who'd never been allowed to learn to read. It tried to make sure that labor contracts between freedmen and their former owners were at least somewhat fair. And most importantly, it was supposed to take land that had been confiscated from Confederates and give it to formerly enslaved families in 40-acre chunks.

In January 1865, General William Sherman issued an order setting aside 400,000 acres along the coast of Georgia, South Carolina, and northern Florida for freed people to settle and farm. Lincoln approved it. By June, over 40,000 formerly enslaved people were living on this land and working it. Freedmen's Bureau agents handed out land titles to over 1,200 people, telling them the land was theirs.

But, here's where it gets tricky. Those land titles weren't permanent, just yet. Congress and the president still needed to officially make them legal and binding. But everybody figured that was just a technicality since Lincoln supported it and Congress seemed ready to back him up. Lincoln understood something that a lot of people missed - you can't just tell four million people "you're free now, good luck" and expect things to work out. In a country where wealth came from owning land, freedom without land wasn't much freedom at all.

But then Lincoln went to the theater, got assassinated, and his vice President, Andrew Johnson, began immediately reversing all of Lincoln's policies.

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Johnson's Reconstruction Plan

In 1862, President Lincoln, a Republican, had chosen a conservative Democrat from Tennessee named Andrew Johnson to be his vice president. This may seem like a weird choice because picking a running mate from the opposing team is almost never done. But Johnson was chosen because of two things: he was from the South and he hated the Confederacy. Lincoln was hoping that by picking Johnson he would send a clear message that he really did want to bring the southern states back as peacefully as possible.

But, nobody–– and we mean nobody–– could have ever dreamed that Andrew Johnson would one day actually be the guy in charge of one of the most crucial chapters in the history of the United States. But a bullet from an assassin’s pistol made the unthinkable a reality.

By all accounts Johnson had the personality of a wet blanket: cold, argumentative, and unwilling to compromise. Johnson was so difficult to get along with that he would alienate even his closest supporters. Johnson was not the kind of guy you wanted in charge of rebuilding a broken nation.

At first, Johnson had talked tough about dealing with the traitors. Born poor, he hated the plantation owners with a passion. So too did the Radical Republicans in Congress, who wanted to punish them for their rebellion. After years of hearing Lincoln talk about reconciliation and brotherhood, finally there was a guy in office who would take a tough stance on the rebels. But as it turns out Johnson's tough talk was just that... talk. In reality, Johnson wanted to bring the southern states back into the Union as quickly as possible and forget that the whole civil war had ever happened.

Johnson's presidential reconstruction plan required that southern states agree to the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery and that any ex-confederates take a loyalty oath to the Union. Rather than punish the leaders of the rebellion with prison or execution, Johnson made a special provision that said that anyone with $20,000 in property had to come groveling to him personally to get their pardon. Flattered by the attention, Johnson handed out presidential pardons like candy on Halloween. In just one year he had granted 7,000 pardons to Confederate leaders and wealthy planters.

Johnson believed that because secession was illegal, the South had never technically left the Union. One California man fired back that just because murder is illegal doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen. Johnson removed Confederate leaders from top state offices and replaced them with loyal Unionists now running the state governments. With that done, Johnson wiped his hands and declared that the South was officially restored. The Radical Republicans in Congress were spitting fire at the betrayal.

I am sworn to uphold the Constitution as Andy Johnson understands it and interprets it.

-Andrew Johnson talking about himself in third person

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Johnson Abandons the Freedmen

Andrew Johnson was not Abraham Lincoln. Where Lincoln had been moving toward giving freed people a real shot at building new lives, Johnson was a Tennessee Democrat who'd never hidden his racist views. He'd once said that "this is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government for white men."

Johnson wasted no time tearing apart what Lincoln had set up. Remember those land titles the Freedmen's Bureau had handed out to over 1,200 freed people? The 40,000 freedmen living on 400,000 acres of coastal land? Johnson gave it all back to the former Confederate owners. In 1866, he ordered the Freedmen's Bureau to return the land, claiming it had been taken illegally. Federal troops forced Black families off land they'd been farming at gunpoint. Out of those 40,000 people who'd settled on the land, only about 2,000 managed to keep it.

Johnson kept going. He started pardoning former Confederate leaders - the same people Lincoln had banned from holding office. These pardoned Confederates walked right back into state governments across the South, and Johnson was fine with it. He cut the Freedmen's Bureau's funding and stripped away its power, turning what was supposed to be a serious agency into something that could barely function. Johnson didn't want to create a new South - he wanted to bring back the old one, just without slavery being legal.

Johnson's hands-off approach gave Southern states exactly what they needed to take back control over Black Americans. With former Confederates running things again and the Freedmen's Bureau basically useless, state governments across the South passed Black Codes - laws meant to keep freed people as close to slavery as possible without technically breaking the Thirteenth Amendment. The codes forced Black Americans into year-long work contracts, threw them in jail for "vagrancy" if they quit terrible jobs, and controlled where they could live and work. Some states even let Black children be "apprenticed" to white employers - which was just slavery with a different label. Johnson had given the South back to the same people who'd started the war, and they jumped at the chance to keep Black Americans under their thumb.

In this cartoon by Thomas Nash, President Johnson kicks Freedman to the curb.

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Why it Matters

Why does this matter to us today? Well, it's like pulling on a thread and watching the whole sweater unravel. Lincoln's untimely exit left a big "what if" in the air, paving the way for a Reconstruction that put old Southern elites back in charge and slammed the brakes on progress towards racial equality. This wasn't just a setback; it was a missed opportunity that still echoes in today’s debates about race, rights, and justice. Understanding this chapter of history helps us see how past decisions shape our present, like how the shaky steps taken (or not taken) during Reconstruction influence the ongoing march for civil rights. So, while Lincoln’s assassination might seem like just another tragic tale from the history books, it’s really a story about how a single moment can bend the arc of history in ways we’re still trying to straighten out.

Digging Deeper

Use the article to answer the questions below.

How did Abraham Lincoln’s assassination change plans for rebuilding the nation after the Civil War?
What was Lincoln’s Ten Percent Plan for bringing Southern states back into the Union?
What was the Freedmen’s Bureau, and how did it help formerly enslaved people start new lives?
How did Andrew Johnson’s Reconstruction plan differ from Lincoln’s plan?
How did Andrew Johnson approach the Freedmen’s Bureau and the rights of formerly enslaved people?

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