The Loyalty Oath during the Civil War

[Wild Bill]

It is common place to say that Lincoln was reasonable or soft on Reconstruction of the South, depending on one's point of view. I tend to think that we know too little to place Lincoln in a box of ideas. I believe that he was much more willing to compromise with the Radical Republicans in a harsher Reconstruction than, say, Johnson was. Lincoln was a real Republican, former Whig, antislavery, and a civil rights advocate (at least partially) for the blacks, whereas Johnson was a former Democrat, slaveholder, and in the end an uncompromising Southerner on the race issue (keep the ex-slaves in their place) and few if any civil rights.

When I taught this stuff 45 years ago I used to put all the factions of the Republican party and the Democrat party on a line graph and show which groups Lincoln, Seward, Johnson, Sumner, Stevens, etc were appealing to in their Reconstruction program, each one cutting out support from the other to create a postwar voting majority in the country and the congress. No, this would be beyond my computer acumen to do it now, I'm sorry. Suffice that Lincoln's real Reconstruction will remain an enigma because of his abrupt demise, but do not think him a push over for the South as many do.