Download Lincoln: Friend of Louisiana

A LOOK AT OUR PAST, PLACES, AND PEOPLE
Lincoln
Friend of Louisiana
created by the Educational Services Department of The Advocate
In 1863, well before the end
of the Civil War (1861-1865),
President Abraham Lincoln
developed a conciliatory plan
for bringing the Confederate
states back into the Union at
war’s end. His plan called for
Louisiana to lead the way toward a national healing. It was
Lincoln’s hope that Louisiana
would serve as a model to be followed by the other Southern states.
In the last public address before his assassination, Lincoln proclaimed, “What has
been said of Louisiana will apply generally to other states.”
By implementing a conciliatory Reconstruction plan, Lincoln hoped 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 end quickly. Lincoln’s plan
was lenient in an attempt to entice the South to
surrender.
Louisiana was the only region deep within the
Confederacy where federal authorities implemented experimental Reconstruction policies
while the Civil War was still raging.
The city of New Orleans was to serve as a prime
testing ground for race relations under the new order. However, the people of New Orleans were not
especially cooperative.
Because New Orleans fell early in the war
and did not suffer from battle, most citizens
were not driven by desperation to want
an end to the war. They refused to give
up hope for a Southern victory.
Lincoln did not want to punish
Southerners or reorganize Southern
society. He wanted Reconstruction to
be a short process in which secession-
ist states swiftly formed new governments with little
federal intervention and rejoined the United States.
Lincoln’s blueprint for Reconstruction included
the Ten-Percent Plan, which specified that a Southern state could be readmitted into the Union once
10 percent of its voters swore an oath of allegiance to
the United States. Voters could then elect delegates
to draft revised state constitutions and establish new
state governments. All Southerners except for highranking Confederate army officers and government
officials would be granted full pardons. All private
property would be protected.
Louisiana embraced Lincoln’s plan and selected
delegates to write a new constitution. The Louisiana
Constitution of 1864 abolished slavery and disposed
of Louisiana’s old order of rule by planters and merchants. It was the first state charter to incorporate
Lincoln’s conciliatory approach and was the leading
test case for postwar policy.
But historians can only speculate about the ultimate effectiveness of Lincoln’s plan. His assassination in 1865 ended all hope for a compassionate
reconciliation.
Many leading Republicans in Congress believed
that Lincoln’s plan for Reconstruction was not harsh
enough, believing that the South should be punished for causing the war. These Radical Republicans
hoped to dismantle Southern society, disband the
planter aristocracy, redistribute land, develop industry, and guarantee civil liberties for former slaves.
Although the Radical Republicans were the minority party in Congress, they managed to sway many
moderates in the postwar years and eventually came
to dominate Congress in later sessions.
The national Lincoln Memorial
In this temple, as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the Union,
the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined, forever.
Beneath the carved words above sits the majestic statue of the 16th President
of the United States, immortalized in marble.
Lying between the north and south chambers of the monument is the central
hall containing the solitary figure of Lincoln sitting in contemplation. The statue
of Lincoln is 19 feet high and weighs 175 tons.
The original plan was for the statue to be only ten feet high, but this was
changed so that the figure of Lincoln would not be dwarfed by the size of the
chamber. A commission to plan a monument was first proposed in 1867, shortly
after Lincoln’s death.
The design for that plan called for six equestrian and 31 pedestrian statues
of colossal size, with a 12-foot statue of Lincoln in the center. That project was
never started for lack of funds.
Congress approved the bill to construct this memorial in 1910. Construction began in 1914, and the memorial was opened to the public in 1922. The
Memorial is visited by millions of visitors each year and is the site of many large
public gatherings and protests. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous
“I Have a Dream” speech to a crowd by the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. Damaged over the years by heavy visitation and environmental factors, the Lincoln
Memorial is currently undergoing a major restoration.
A man of genius, Lincoln was also a man of contradictions: he skillfully
led the nation through a civil war, yet he was a poor administrator; he was
noted for his wry sense of humor, yet he was often melancholy; he was
very religious, yet he attended no church; he stressed the importance of
education, yet his formal schooling totaled less than one year.
Even physically, Lincoln was a man of contradictions: his
brute strength was legendary, yet he was thin and awkward;
he was unsurpassed in his ability to capture an audience,
yet his voice was annoyingly shrill.
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