Compare and Contrast Presidential Reconstruction with Radical Republican Reconstruction

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The plan that was the best is the plan that Congress had come up with. This plan would give African Americans rights as freedmen, such as the right to vote, own property, and most of all would be able to get elected into the political offices. The South however did not want to let the African Americans to become free. Congress was trying to look out for the freedmen, but Congress did not try to look at it from the stand point of the southerners. There was a lot of violence that started to take place after Congress started to pass these laws. New Orleans saw it the worst with a massacre of newly freed African Americans who were also Union Soldiers. In this we saw some African Americans starting to become members of Congress, state, and local governments. The South did not like to see this and this brought to life the KKK which is Americas first known terrorist.

Although President Lincoln, President Johnson, and Congress had different approaches to reconstructing the South, it is evident that the main motives of the Reconstruction process were to secure the civil rights of freedmen and to consolidate the political goals and gains of the newly re-constituted nation. The Reconstruction faced much opposition and criticism during the 1860s; however, it was able to make noble strides in the protection of countless Black Americans in the decades to come.

Now in actuality it is a toss-up, but Congress would have had the best plan. The reconstruction plans all had good points, ideas, and rules in them. However, none of them worked because of the rebellious South did not even follow any of the laws that they felt did not work for them. This made the entire reconstruction period close to being a failure because they did not solve the largest problem they had. They abolished slavery and it showed up in the Constitution, but never showed up in the southern part of American society.