History of the United States I / Unit 16 USH1 2253 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Ten Percent Versus a Majority
The idea
Lincoln's ten percent plan required that ten percent of a rebel state's eighteen sixty voting population swear oaths of allegiance to the United States and to emancipation, after which the state would draft a new constitution. In eighteen sixty-four senator Benjamin Wade and representative Henry Winter Davis countered with a bill requiring a majority of voters and officials to take the Ironclad Oath, swearing they had never supported the Confederacy, with refusers excluded from southern political life. Lincoln killed it with a pocket veto.
In practice
Ten percent against a majority, and an oath about what a man will do against an oath about what he has already done.
Where people slip
That contrast holds the whole Reconstruction argument in two numbers. Lincoln's oath looks forward and can be sworn by anyone willing to accept the outcome. The Ironclad Oath looks backward and cannot be sworn by anyone who fought, which is most of the South. Lincoln vetoed it knowing no southern state could meet it.
Your place on the trail
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