The reconstruction era was a period after the Civil War that was critical in providing the defeated southern states with a Union led government in order to reconstruct the South immediately. There were a few different approaches to the process of reconstruction by President Abraham Lincoln, President Andrew Johnson, and Congress. Presidents Lincoln and Johnson both had similar approaches to reconstruction, but they also had some opposing views as well. One of the major differences in the two was that Johnson opposed many of the civil rights granted to the freed African Americans, like the fourteenth amendment. This probably had something to do with the fact that Andrew Johnson was originally Governor of the southern state of Tennessee, even though that state seceded from the confederacy. He still had some of the southern views of African Americans.
President Abraham Lincoln's plan for reconstruction started with his Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction in 1863. This plan required at least 10 percent of the people who voted in 1860 to take an oath of allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Union, upon doing so they would receive a presidential pardon. These same people also had to support Lincoln's laws on emancipation; upon doing so the former confederate state would be able to form a union government. Not everybody, however, was able to participate in this; those people included any Confederate officials, congressman, Confederate military officers, and any person that failed to treat detained African Americans as prisoners of war. Most moderate republicans were in favor of Lincoln's reconstruction plan; the ones that opposed the plan were the Radical Republicans. They wanted full citizenship for the freed African Americans, as well as a republican government. Backed by congress, the Radical Republicans assisted in passing the Wade-Davis Bill, which would require a majority of white male citizens to declare their allegiance instead of Lincoln's 10 percent.