Compare and Contrast the Ten Percent Plan and the Wade Davis Bill

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Abraham Lincolns third annual message to congress 1863 the state of the union address speech, Abraham Lincoln state that he did not want to punish the confederacy he wanted to bring them back into the union and eliminate tension between them. By trying to achieve this goal President Abraham Lincoln and his cabinet came up with the Ten Percent Plan. However many of the Radical Republicans at that time wished to punish the South so they created the Wade Davis bill in the summer of 1864 July,2 named after the writers Benjamin Wade and Henry Winter Davis. The Ten Percent plan stated that southern states could be readmitted into the Union if Ten Percent of its voters swore an oath of allegiance to the Union and accepted the 14th amendment that granted citizenship to all those who are born in the United States. Delegates could know be elected to create a new revised state constitution and governments also all southerners would be pardoned accept for high ranking confederate army officers and government officials. Private property would be protected however this did not include slaves. While most of the Republicans in congress at that time supported the president's plane for reconstructions others wanted to punish the confederacy. One of the flaws to the plan was that it only took ten percent of the voters to decide if they wanted back into the Union This made voting no longer a democracy. On July 2 1864 two Radical Republicans Benjamin Wade and Henry Winter Davis wrote the Wade Davis Bill. This bill stated that Southern states could rejoin the union only if 50 percent or more of its registered voters swore an “Ironclad Oath” of allegiance to the united states. The bill also granted African Americans civil liberties however it did not give them the right to vote. It divided the South into five districts that would be controlled by Union military leaders. President
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