What were Lincoln's major strengths and weaknesses as a leader in developing the reconstruction plan?

Lincoln's
Emancipation Proclamation was a great start; even though it meant little to the Confederate
government at the time, and to the Southern states still under Confederate control, Southern
slaves heard about it, and it gave them hope that a Union victory would eventually free them.
Some Confederate states began reconstruction policies before the end of the war--Louisiana,
Tennessee and Arkansas among them--and military governors were installed. Lincoln meant for his
Louisiana Plan to serve as a blueprint for further state reconstruction plans. Two early
Confiscation Laws, to protects slaves and return Confederate land to the Union, were not
supported strongly by Congress. Lincoln outlawed slavery in Washington, D. C., and began the
process to eliminate slavery in the Union border states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and
Missouri. He signed the Freedmen's Bureau Bill, providing aid to freed slaves and white
refugees, and signed legislation to ban color discrimination.

Lincoln's plan
to colonize freed slaves in Central America and the Caribbean was a bad idea, criticized by
Frederick Douglas and other abolitionists. The River Queen conference of February 1865, with
Confederate representatives in attendance, was a failure.

There is considerable debate on how well Lincoln, had he lived, would have handled
Congress during theprocess that took place after the Civil War ended. One historical camp argues
that Lincoln's flexibility, pragmatism, and superior political skills with Congress would have
solved Reconstruction with far less difficulty. The other camp believes the Radicals would have
attempted to impeach Lincoln, just as they did to his successor, Andrew Johnson, in
1868.