Statesmanship and Reconstruction

Moderate versus Radical Republicans on Restoring the Union after the Civil War

After the Civil War, reconstruction governments for the former rebel states could not survive without native white support, but this was not possible without devising the right incentives. Though Lincoln demonstrated how to reconstruct, the Congress, when legislating in response to the South's rejection of the Fourteenth Amendment, enacted a law that undercut the required incentives. However, several Republican state leaders demonstrated Lincoln’s wisdom by either figuring out how to hold a state Republican party together or how to run a Republican government that enjoyed local white support.