Lincoln Reconstruction Plan
December 1863
Abraham Lincoln had thought about the process of restoring the Union from the earliest
days of the war. His guiding principles were to accomplish the task as rapidly as possible
and ignore calls for punishing the South. Unlike the Radical Republicans, it was
Lincoln’s belief that the Southern states had not really left the Union since it was never
constitutionally possible.
In late 1863, Lincoln announced a formal plan for reconstruction:
1. A general amnesty would be granted to all who would take an oath of loyalty to
the United States and pledge to obey all federal laws pertaining to slavery
2. High Confederate officials and military leaders were to be temporarily excluded
from the process
3. When one-tenth of the number of voters who had participated in the 1860 election
had taken the oath within a particular state, then that state could launch a new
government and elect representatives to Congress.
