America's Post-Civil War Growing Pains - Research Paper Example

Lincoln gave out his plan of giving out amnesty to all the southerners who will support slave’s emancipation and then later proclaim loyalty to the union this was because he wanted to drain the support of the confederacy and shorten the war. Presidential reconstruction started in the year 1965 whereby Johnson became the president after the death of Lincoln. He then unveiled his master plan of Reconstruction which was to create loyalty oath that should be taken in the southern so that they could receive a pardon for their rebellion participation, and doing away with the “40 acres and a mule plan” that had been suggested in the charter of the Freedmen’s Bureau.

At this time, many of the southern states brought back confederate leaders to political power and then later created the “black codes” that had been modelled on the slave codes that was in existence due to the civil war. Johnson did not do anything to prevent the south from imposing these conditions to the black population. This saw the beginning of the Radical Republican party which was made up of the northerners because the southerners were still in the congress (Colains & Marler, 2008).

The Racial Republican then took the initiative of passing important Civil Rights Acts that counteracted the new black codes of the south. In 1865-1915, there was the second historical event which was named industrial Revolution. At this time, US tried to evolve from a low economic backwater to be the most powerful economic country in the world. The nation’s main energy source which was mainly powered by humans and animals changed to mechanical power (Roberts, 2010). The railway industry expanded at this time from 30,000 miles of track to around 250,000 miles.

These improvements lead the movement of goods and products to be easy, reliable and cheap. In addition to this; the steel industry was the main contributor of the massive expansion of railroads (Mckenzie, 2007). In case John Wilkes would have not assassinated President Lincoln, many things could have changed, and one of the issues that could have changed drastically is Reconstruction. First, in the case of Lincoln, he could have tried to be more diplomatic to the south this was not the case with President Johnson because his main interest was to punish the southerners.

Lincoln was more guided in favour of diplomacy and compromise (Selden, 2010). Secondly, the Radical Reconstruction could have been different from what happened. Those people who were radical thought that Lincoln was much softer to the south and could have revolutionized the southern institutions, habits and manners; they all wanted the south to be reconstructed according to the new order. They were mainly idealists whereby they were mostly driven by religious views, these Republicans were not for the idea that the blacks were low-grade and consequently, they requested that complete social, political, and civil privileges for slaves to be administered and respected.

The Radical Republicans dominated in congress and they clashed with President Johnson often (Mckenzie, 2007). Johnson policies were on how to carry out reconstruction according to Lincoln, but the motives were not the same with those of Lincoln. The industrialization and urbanization revolution of the 19th and 20th centuries generally changed the urban life of many Americans and gave them chance to improve on their living standards.