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The Radicalism of Lincoln's 10 Percent Plan - NYTimes.com
DECEMBER 12, 2013, 11:46 AM
The Radicalism of Lincoln’s 10 Percent Plan
By RICHARD STRINER
Scores of students have been taught that Abraham Lincoln’s Proclamation of Amnesty and
Reconstruction, appended to the presidential message to Congress of December 1863,
offered rebels an easy way to get back into his good graces: as soon as they took an oath of
loyalty to the Union and promised to support emancipation, he would pardon them and
return their confiscated property (except for emancipated slaves, of course). Moreover, as
soon as 10 percent of the 1860 electorate in any rebel state had taken the oath, he would
permit that 10 percent to commence home rule and elect state officials.
Many radical Republicans condemned the plan as too lenient. And scores of Americans ever
since have regarded the Lincoln plan as lenient. But what the radicals failed to perceive was
that Lincoln’s offer was in some ways the reverse of what it seemed. It was a tricky,
audacious and forceful plan to transform rebel states into free states.
Ever since the Republicans suffered reverses in the midterm elections of 1862 —
attributable at least in part to a white-supremacist backlash against Lincoln’s Emancipation
Proclamation — the president cast a fearful eye upon the prospects for his re-election in
1864. If the war dragged on and the white backlash worsened, Lincoln might find himself
thrown out of office by a pro-slavery Democrat. And then everything that Lincoln and his
fellow Republicans had achieved would be in jeopardy.
Lincoln was anxious to protect his emancipation policy. In December 1862 he had urged the
outgoing Congress to amend the Constitution in order to protect it. But nothing came of this
suggestion in 1863. So that summer, Lincoln hit upon a different plan to improve the longterm odds for emancipation.
He probably thought of this tactic as he pondered the admission of the new state of West
Virginia. Unionists in the western counties of Virginia had rebelled against secession and
proclaimed their portion of Virginia a separate state, applying for admission to the Union in
autumn 1862. Since there was no way that the Republican Congress would admit the new
state of West Virginia as a slave state, the proposed constitution for the state phased out
slavery there. With this approved constitution, it was admitted on June 20, 1863. A new free
state was thereby added to the constitutional and political arithmetic of the United States.
Much farther to the south, the long-term politics for emancipation were churning in the rebel
state of Louisiana, which was largely occupied by United States troops. On May 1, 1863, a
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The Radicalism of Lincoln's 10 Percent Plan - NYTimes.com
pro-slavery group of Louisiana citizens petitioned Lincoln for “full recognition of all the rights
of the State, as they existed previous to the passage of the act of secession.” These Louisiana
citizens were obviously trying to acknowledge the possible defeat of the Confederacy while
hanging onto their property in slaves. It bears noting that Lincoln’s definitive Emancipation
Proclamation of Jan. 1, 1863, applied only in states or portions of states that were actively in
rebellion. The occupied portions of Louisiana were no longer in a state of rebellion — so the
Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to them. No wonder that slave owners in these
portions of Louisiana were on the move politically.
But Lincoln’s agents in the state informed him that a group of local Unionists were interested
in reorganizing Louisiana on a “free state” basis. Lincoln quickly rejected the petition of the
pro-slavery group, informing them that since “reliable information has reached me that a
respectable portion of the Louisiana people, desire to amend their State constitution, and
contemplate holding a convention for that object,” the president saw “sufficient reason why
the general government should not give the committal you seek, to the existing State
constitution.”
Using all the nimble language at his disposal, Lincoln made his objectives clear in an Aug. 5
letter to Nathaniel Banks, a Republican general whom Lincoln had placed in command of
United States occupation forces in Louisiana. But he also made it clear that his own role in
the process would have to be deniable. “While I very well know what I would be glad for
Louisiana to do,” he wrote, “it is quite a different thing for me to assume direction of the
matter. I would be glad for her to make a new Constitution recognizing the emancipation
proclamation, and adopting emancipation in those parts of the state to which the
proclamation does not apply. … If these views can be of any advantage in giving shape,
impetus, and action there, I shall be glad for you to use them prudently for that object.”
In September, Lincoln turned to the rebel state of Tennessee, which was also largely under
Union occupation. To Andrew Johnson — a former Tennessee senator and now the
occupation governor — Lincoln wrote that “not a moment should be lost” in the effort to turn
Tennessee into a free state. “I see that you have declared in favor of emancipation in
Tennessee,” Lincoln wrote, “for which may God bless you. Get emancipation into your new
State government — Constitution — and there will be no such word as fail in your case.” Do it
quickly, Lincoln urged, since “it can not be known who is next to occupy the position I now
hold, nor what he will do.”
But this “free state” conversion of occupied rebel states proceeded too slowly for Lincoln. In
Louisiana, Banks’s campaign to enroll a new electorate for the purpose of redrafting the state
constitution had run into delays. “This disappoints me bitterly,” Lincoln wrote to Banks in
November. “There is danger, even now, that the adverse element seeks insidiously to preoccupy the ground.” Lincoln feared that “a few professedly loyal men shall draw the disloyal
about them, and colorably set up a State government, repudiating the emancipation
proclamation, and re-establishing slavery.”
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A few weeks later, Lincoln sent to Congress his annual message, with its “Proclamation of
Amnesty and Reconstruction.” Many people — at the time and ever since — have perceived
in Lincoln’s 10 Percent Plan the work of a moderate and lenient statesman who intended to
make few demands of the defeated South as long as the Union was re-established.
But careful scrutiny of the plan reveals that it was much more demanding than it seemed. It
was true that Lincoln offered a pardon to penitent rebels (with the exception of those who
served as Confederate leaders) who would take an oath of loyalty to the Union. It was also
true that if just 10 percent of the 1860 voters in any rebel state should take that oath, the
president would allow the state to begin home rule.
But there was a catch. The oath that these former rebels had to take would include a
provision to “abide by and faithfully support all acts of Congress passed during the existing
rebellion with reference to slaves, so long and so far as not repealed, modified or held void by
Congress, or by decision of the Supreme Court,” as well as “all proclamations of the President
made during the existing rebellion having reference to slaves.” These former rebels would
therefore have to take an oath on the Bible — an oath before almighty God, which in the
South was a solemn thing to do — that they sincerely supported the Emancipation
Proclamation.
And if they didn’t take the oath, they couldn’t vote.
In other words, Lincoln’s supposedly “lenient” plan for Reconstruction forbade any Southern
whites to vote unless they were opponents of slavery. Only antislavery whites would have
the vote in this supposedly “lenient” plan. And it would not take very many of them — only
10 percent — to overpower the wishes of a 90-percent pro-slavery majority and commence
the process of turning their state into a free state.
Here is a stunning demonstration of the way in which Lincoln used Machiavellian methods
for idealistic purposes. His 10 Percent Plan was in some respects the reverse of what it
seemed. So far from being lenient and undemanding, it was in many ways a pushy,
highhanded, audacious and deceptive method for forcing fast emancipation where Lincoln’s
military power made it possible.
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Richard Striner, a history professor at Washington College, is the author of “Lincoln and Race.”
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