Which reconstruction plan was the most harsh

By the end of the year, most of the South had held elections under the new state constitutions. Often, ex-Confederate leaders won elections for state government offices and for U.

The newly formed state legislatures quickly authorized many needed public projects and the taxes to pay for them. Among these projects was the creation, for the first time in the South, of free public education. But the public schools excluded black children. The state legislatures also began to pass laws limiting the freedom of the former slaves. These laws mirrored those of colonial times, which placed severe restrictions on both slaves and emancipated blacks.

Neither of these groups could vote, serve on juries, travel freely, or work in occupations of their choice. Even their marriages were outside the law. The white legislators saw little reason not to continue the tradition of unequal treatment of black persons.

White Southerners also feared that if freedmen did not work for white landowners, the agricultural economy of the South would collapse. Although the federal government had confiscated some Confederate lands and given them to freed slaves, it never planned to do this on a massive scale. Nonetheless, expecting their own plots of land, blacks in large numbers refused to sign work contracts with white landowners for the new year.

At the same time, Southern whites passed around their own rumor that blacks would rise in rebellion when the free land failed to appear on Christmas Day. All these economic worries, prejudices, and fears helped produce the first Black Codes of These codes consisted of special laws that applied only to black persons.

The first Black Code, enacted by Mississippi, proved harsh and vindictive. Its major features included the following:.

The Southern Black Codes defined the rights of freedmen. They mainly restricted their rights. But the codes did grant black persons a few more civil rights than they possessed before the Civil War. The contract had to be witnessed and then approved by a judge. Other provisions of the code listed the rights and obligations of the servant and master.

All Southern Black Codes relied on vagrancy laws to pressure freedmen to sign labor contracts. The code provided that vagrants could be arrested and imprisoned at hard labor. The courts customarily waived such punishment for white vagrants, allowing them to take an oath of poverty instead. Southern Black Codes provided another source of labor for white employers—black orphans and the children of vagrants or other destitute parents.

The South Carolina code authorized courts to apprentice such black children, even against their will, to an employer until age 21 for males and 18 for females. Masters had the right to inflict moderate punishment on their apprentices and to recapture runaways.

But the code also required masters to provide food and clothing to their apprentices, teach them a trade, and send them to school. Most of these crimes carried the death penalty for blacks, but not for whites. Also, blacks could not practice any occupation, except farmer or servant under contract, without getting an annual license from a judge. They accused Southern whites of trying to restore slavery. Congress refused to seat Southerners elected under the new state constitutions.

All southerners except for high-ranking Confederate army officers and government officials would be granted a full pardon. Lincoln guaranteed southerners that he would protect their private property, though not their slaves. In many ways, the Ten-Percent Plan was more of a political maneuver than a plan for Reconstruction.

Lincoln wanted to end the war quickly. He feared that a protracted war would lose public support and that the North and South would never be reunited if the fighting did not stop quickly. His fears were justified: by late , a large number of Democrats were clamoring for a truce and peaceful resolution.

President Lincoln seemed to favor self-Reconstruction by the states with little assistance from Washington. To appeal to poorer whites, he offered to pardon all Confederates; to appeal to former plantation owners and southern aristocrats, he pledged to protect private property. Why did it fail? Members of the first South Carolina legislature after the Civil War. Approximately 2, Black men were elected to office during the post-war Reconstruction period, which briefly provided political and social power to formerly enslaved people before a backlash ushered in an era of segregation.

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