Abraham
Lincoln's Ten Percent Plan, also known as the Proclamation of Amnesty and , and the Wade-Davis
Bill were both proposals for reconstruction of the South after the American Civil War. However,
they differed radically in the severity of their terms.
Lincoln devised his Ten Percent Plan in the spirit of reconciliation, with a view to
making it easy for Southerners to accept. It stipulated that a new state government could be
formed and the state could be reintegrated into the Union when at least 10 percent of eligible
white male voters took an oath of allegiance to the United States. Property would be restored to
all rebels except the highest ranking military and political leaders. The states could devise
their own plans on how to handle former slaves as long as the slaves remained fully
emancipated.
Many congressmen were opposed to Lincoln's
plan because they felt it was too lenient, so Benjamin Wade of Ohio and Henry Winter Davis of
Maryland sponsored an alternative Bill that was much harsher. The Wade-Davis Bill insisted that
a majority of white male voters had to pledge allegiance to the United States before a state
could be readmitted to the Union. The bill also gave African-American men the right to vote and
prohibited officers and veterans of the Confederacy from voting.
Lincoln objected to the Wade-Davis Bill not only because it was too harsh, but also
because the bill implied that the Southern States had committed treason in leaving the Union and
had to rejoin, whereas the official government stance was that it was unconstitutional for them
to have seceded in the first place. He also felt that slavery should be a federal rather than a
state issue, which would soon prove true with the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. Although
the Wade-Davis Bill passed Congress, Lincoln pocket-vetoed it, and it was not
resurrected.
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