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The Best Plan to Reunite? Pitch Your Idea After the Civil War, rebuilding the Union became the predominant issue in American politics. Differing political beliefs led to the emergence of three main schools of thought on how Reconstruction should proceed. Radical Republicans, moderate Republicans, and Democrats all developed their own plans for rebuilding the country. In this activity, you will evaluate the Reconstruction plans of the Radical Republicans, moderate Republicans, and Democrats and select the one you think would be most effective in rebuilding the nation. Then, you will write a letter to either President Lincoln or President Johnson urging that person to follow the plan you chose. Ruins in Richmond, 1865 Russell, Andrew J. Military installations, activities, and views. 1865. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress. Web. I. Evaluating the Platforms 1. Think about the basic beliefs of the Radical Republicans, moderate Republicans, and Democrats. What were the main political views of these groups? How did they differ from one another? Discovery Education Techbook Discovery Communications, LLC 1 The Best Plan to Reunite? Pitch Your Idea “The President’s Message,” from Harper’s Weekly, 1863 This editorial reacting to a message by President Lincoln supports the moderate Republican point of view. The Message of this year is the most important document ever submitted by the Executive [President Lincoln] to Congress and the country. Elsewhere in our columns we [explain] its important points, and in the President’s own words, because a conciser and clearer statement is not possible. There has been occasionally some sharp criticism of his “style,” but there are few state papers more direct and incisive than his. He knows exactly what he means to say, and exactly how to say it. And when his Messages and letters are compared with those of our Chief Magistrates for many a year, their true American ring, their manly faith in human rights and the people, are as unprecedented as they are inspiring. The President’s plan of reconstruction is familiar to all our readers. It is simple and radical; it is also inevitable. For either the rebels must be left to determine when to throw down their arms and rush back to the Union to secure political power, or they must understand that their chiefs are excepted from pardon, and that the system for which they took up arms having ceased legally to exist, all hope of its restoration must be abandoned. The former is the Copperhead plan. It proposes that whenever a rebel chooses to say that he returns to his allegiance he may resume all his political rights. The President’s plan proposes that he shall resume his political rights, not when he says that he is sorry, but when he says that he is sorry in such a manner that he can reasonabl[y] be believed. That something more than an oath to the Constitution is necessary to secure the peace of the Union is clear enough from the fact that [Confederate President] Jefferson Davis himself does not allow [admit] that he has violated his oath. In his view secession is consistent with the Constitution. Resistance to coercion is not, according to him and the State Rights school, rebellion . . . Now the paramount [most important] duty of the Government is not merely to subdue, but to prevent rebellion. But it is clear that when the rebel guns are silenced the Union is not necessarily restored. The initiative of political action in the States which rebellion will leave sullen and passive must proceed from the National Government. . . . Discovery Education Techbook Discovery Communications, LLC 4 The Best Plan to Reunite? Pitch Your Idea The President has been often accused of tardily following instead of leading public opinion. But it is his great merit that he early saw this to be a war in which the people must save themselves. If they were unequal to the task, a popular government was a failure. And therefore he has sought only to be the executive magistrate of their will, which he has divined with more sagacity [wisdom] than any public man in our history … put[ting] into clear and simple form the settlement to which the national common-sense irresistibly tends. "The President's Message." 26 December 1863. Editorials. Harper’s Weekly. Web. Discovery Education Techbook Discovery Communications, LLC 5 The Best Plan to Reunite? Pitch Your Idea “A Plain Danger,” from Harper's Weekly, 1865 This editorial supports the Radical Republican point of view. Apparently we are in some danger of not learning from experience. The . . . hostility to the Union and Government having proved its character and purpose by a war continued with unparalleled ferocity until it failed from sheer exhaustion, it is now gravely proposed that we shall act as if that spirit were no longer dangerous, simply because, for the present, it is exhausted. There could be no more fatal mistake . . . The traditions and education of “the South” are what they always were. The dominant class of that section is not less dominant because it is defeated. Its authority is now consecrated in the popular mind of its region by suffering and misfortune. Its haughtiness is supreme. Its hate is unconquerable. It soothes its pride by the conviction that it was only overcome by numbers, and disdainfully awaits the day when it can again try its fortune in the field, or, should that be hopeless, when its sullen passivity of resistance shall paralyze all efforts of the Government at reorganization . . . The degree of faith in State Sovereignty and adhesion to Slavery may have varied, but the white population of the rebel States was practically a unit during the war. . . . No sentimental drivel about “brethren” will help us organize the results of the war any more than it prevented the war. Men whose chief point of honor is contempt of the principle of our common Government are not our political brethren. Men and women who have gloried in the torture of our soldiers for defending that Government are not our social brethren. . . . Any steps at reorganization which disregard these plain facts will be utterly futile. The prime necessity of our policy is a comprehension of the truth, not a statement of the theory. The possibility that this spirit of hostility may regain control of the Government must be inflexibly prevented at whatever cost. If there really be no such possibility so much the better. But that must not be assumed. The presumption is entirely the other way. While there is yet a doubt, the force of the United States should be fully maintained everywhere. Let freedom of speech, and freedom of the press, and absolute personal freedom be established and defended in the rebel States. Let the whole body of the adult male population be registered and suffered to vote, if you will. . . . Discovery Education Techbook Discovery Communications, LLC 6 The Best Plan to Reunite? Pitch Your Idea Let the people of the United States retain absolute hold of the whole rebel region until they are satisfied that its citizens will co-operate in good faith with the rest of the country. We believe that the principles of the American system are fully adequate to the perfect pacification of the country. But . . . the loyal white people of the late rebel States are not strong enough, nor united enough, to secure the observance of those principles, and that this can be done only by the power of the whole people. "A Plain Danger." 5 August 1865. Editorials. Harper’s Weekly. Web. Discovery Education Techbook Discovery Communications, LLC 7 The Best Plan to Reunite? Pitch Your Idea Excerpt from Address of Democratic Members of Congress to the Democracy of the United States, 1864 This excerpt supports the Democratic point of view. TO MAINTAIN THE CONSTITUTION AS IT IS, AND TO RESTORE THE UNION AS IT WAS. To maintain the Constitution is to respect the rights of the States and the liberties of the citizen. It is to adhere faithfully to the very principles and policy which the Democratic party has professed for more than half a century. Let its history, and the results, from the beginning, prove whether it has practiced them. We appeal proudly to the record. The first step towards a restoration of the Union as it was is to maintain the Constitution as it is. . .To restore the Union, it is essential, first, to give assurance to every State and to the people of every section that their rights and liberties and property will be secure within the Union under the Constitution . . . To restore the Union is to crush out sectionalism North and South. To begin the great work of restoration through the ballot is to kill Abolition. The bitter waters of secession flowed first and are fed still from the unclean fountain of abolition. That fountain must be dried up. Armies may break down the power of the Confederate Government in the South ; but the work of restoration can be carried on only through political organization and the ballot in the North, and' West. In this great work we cordially invite the cooperation of all men of every party, who are opposed to the fell spirit of abolition, and who, in sincerity, desire the Constitution as it is, and the Union as it was. Let the dead past bury its dead. Rally, lovers of the Union, the Constitution, and of Liberty, to the standard of the Democratic party, already in the field and confident of victory. That party is the natural and persistent enemy of abolition. Upon this question its record as a national organization, however it may have been at times with particular men or in particular States, is clear and unquestionable. . . .“Resolved, That Congress has do power under the Constitution to interfere with or control the domestic institutions of the several States, and that such States are the sole and proper judges of everything appertaining to their own affairs not prohibited by the Constitution; that all efforts of the Abolitionists or others made to induce Congress to interfere with questions of slavery, or to take incipient steps in relation thereto, are calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequences, and that all such efforts have an inevitable tendency to diminish the happiness of the people and endanger the stability and permanency of the Union, and ought not to be countenanced by any friend of our political institutions.” Richardson, W. A. Address of Democratic Members of Congress to the Democracy of the United States. Washington, DC: Towers & Co, 1864. Web. Discovery Education Techbook Discovery Communications, LLC 8