CHAPTER 14 – TO PUNISH OR TO FORGIVE?!

Section 1 – “With Malice Toward None”

Now that the Civil War was over …..

THE QUESTION IS HOW IS THE SOUTH TO BE BROUGHT BACK INTO THE UNION?

• 250,000 Southerners had died in the war.• (but the North had also lost…300,000 dead)

• The South’s land lay in ruin, charred, ruined. Their economy was tied up in their land.

• (but still the North also had damages – they had forts and factories torn apart)

What type of questions were asked about the South???

1.) How would the crops get planted and tended to?

2.) Who would run the schools?

3.) How would they get the state governments organized again? Who would collect taxes? Keep the peace? Protect their life and their property?

Lincoln vs. the Radicals Lincoln basically

believed the South were still states and the most the Union should ask was for some Confederate leaders not to be in office but he didn’t want to punish them.

Radical Republicans… Some Republicans

and most Democrats agreed with Lincoln.

But others called “Radical Republicans” were bitter towards the South and wanted to punish them. They also wanted to see the newly freed slaves receive fair treatment.

Radical Republicans cont. They thought the

Southern States had no rights under the Constitution (wanted to treat them as conquered territories like those out West).

Obviously the fear was that this would never get them back.

Radical Republican Leadersintroducing…Thaddeus Stevens

Rep. from PA – called “a humanitarian without humanity”

Club foot Fought for noble causes but

seemed to always have grudge with all.

Purpose in life was to punish the “traitors”

Confederates had destroyed his iron works and burned nearby city

Inspired fear more than love or respect.

Fought to abolish slavery

Radical Republican Leadersintroducing…Charles Sumner

Leader of RR in Senate from Massachusetts

Had been beaten before the war by Brooks (p. 316) in chamber – now time for pay back!

Proud, vain, fought against slavery and white Southreners.

Lincoln’s plan for Reunion Dec 8, 1863 (before war ended)

Lincoln in his speech “Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction”. – said he would pardon almost all Southerners.

All he asked in return was a solemn oath to support the Constitution, abolish slavery,

Basically if 1/10 of those who voted in the 1860 election to the oath then they were back in.

The Wade-Davis Plan RR weren’t satisfied. 50% of white men in

state needed to take a new oath.

Then since the old south had committed suicide they would need to have an election to call a convention to make a new state constitution.

Wade Davis Plan continued Can’t vote unless you

took the “iron-clad” oath.

The oath was not only a future one but one of past purity (which most couldn’t make)

Lincoln wouldn’t sign it but said the States could choose his or the Wade Davis plan.

THE ASSASSINATION OF LINCOLN

The President’s Death April 14, 1865 – after

Cabinet meeting, Lincoln joined wife at Ford’s Theater in DC.

Actor, John Wilkes Booth, of Maryland, a passionate Southerner, a week after Appomattox, shot Lincoln in head and shouted “Sic semper tyrannis” (thus ever to Tyrants),

Booth killed and was killed…

Sec. of State Seward was also seriously injured but the conspirator who went to kill VP Johnson lost his nerve.

Booth and fellow conspirators were caught and killed (shot and barn on fire)

6 were hung (including MD. Mary Surratt the first woman ever executed. Her son got away!

Though hard to believe … In death Lincoln was actually larger than in life. He was immortalized and

came to represent freedom.

Student Assignment…. Go to

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_Captain!_My_Captain!

And download and print in One Note “O Captain, My Captain” a poem written by Walt Whitman in memorial to President Abraham Lincoln.