Deceitful Deals Root of Reconstruction Failure

As the war neared its close, Congress debated how to govern the peace. What should happen to the leaders of the Confederacy? Would they still have the rights of citizens? What should happen to their property? Thaddeus Stevens insisted that the federal government had to treat the former Confederacy as a conquered people and reform the foundation of their institutions, both political, municipal and social, or else all our blood and treasure have been spent in vain.But Lincoln was opposed to a vindictive peace, fearing that it would prevent the nation from binding its wounds. He proposed, instead, the so-called 10 per cent plan, which included pardoning Confederate leaders and allowing a state to reenter the Union when 10 per cent of its voters had taken an oath of allegiance. Radical Republicans in Congress rejected that plan and, at the end of 1864, passed the Wade–Davis Bill, which…