The American South should have been treated as a rebellious state as they did not have evidence of any form of change after losing the war to the North. While the nation needed to move past the war, these states continued to undermine the tenets of President Lincoln’s campaign, limiting African-Americans’ rights and intimidating them from voting. The states understood the issues under contention as the war started but focused on segregation, a lifestyle that would permeate US society for almost a century. It is also important to note that while the South accepted defeat, it continued to propagate the traits that had led to the war. It discriminated against blacks in states where they were the majority, using threats of violence (Corbett et al., 2021). Individuals in this section of the US needed a stricter approach to work as a deterrent towards injustice rather than pardons.
The Confederacy military leaders also gained power and returned to their former positions soon after the enaction of President Andrew Johnson’s Reconstruction Plan. While the previous Reconstruction plan protected black rights, President Johnson’s plan allowed Southern states to dictate the transition of blacks from slavery and denied their political representation in these areas (Corbett et al., 2021). As part of the US, these states should have been deemed rebellious states rather than a defeated nations as they were part of the greater country rather than a separate entity. President Johnson’s actions made him unpopular in the North as he neglected Black individuals’ protection under the constitution. Treating the South as a separate nation enabled the enaction of Jim Crow Laws, ignoring tenets established under President Lincoln’s government (Corbett et al., 2021). As rebellious states, the government would have imposed anti-separation laws that would grant African-Americans political, economic, and social freedoms in the South. President Lincoln’s egalitarian Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction protected black individuals legally, a factor that was eroded after the Congress Reconstruction compromise of 1877 that saw the North withdraw troops from the Southern states.
References
Corbett, P. S., Janssen, V., Lund, J. M., Pfannestiel, T., Waskiewicz, S., & Vickery, P. (2021, July 19). U.S. History. OpenStax. Web.