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THE FAILURE OF THE CONGRESSIONAL RECONSTRUCTION PLAN

The Reconstruction was the time following the Civil War during the years of 1865-1877 in which the previously seceded southern states were readmitted back into the Union. This was done gradually through plans drawn by both the executive and legislative branches of the federal government. The death of ‘Honest Abe’ Lincoln and his Ten-Percent Plan was a catalyst for the events of the post-Civil War with millions of freedmen and poor farmers that were suffering under the wrath of the economic struggles for survival. The Presidential Reconstruction Plan was headed first by Abraham Lincoln with his successor, Andrew Johnson taking control of the stand later on with a weak front towards southern punishment. After that, Congress held the power to influence the American macrocosm of its society but internal shifting of power created made Congress into a veritable seesaw. The Congress' Reconstruction efforts failed because of the political shifts in power that caused the issues of remerging to jump one way or another, hate crimes and groups that were allowed to fester, and the social willingness to accept and encourage segregation.
In the heated Congressional meets of the Reconstruction, southern Democrats and northern Republicans were at a battle with one another, with each gaining ground and then falling back. The Radical Republicans, as they came to be known, were the majority party rule before the Amnesty Acts of 1872 and were pro-war, pro-abolitionist and pro-freedmen’s rights. Such things passed under them were the Freedmen’s Bureau and the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 both of which were ultimately vetoed by President Johnson, a pro-slavery racist and the new member of the Republican hit list. After the Amnesty Acts allowed the southern Congressional representatives back to their posts, the power shifted subtly towards their own Democratic party, full of plantation owners and racist bigots....