Beginning of Essay
Then And Now "Spell the word one way, with a small r , and it has a good American purposefulness; for it means a putting together, a rebuilding, a rehabilitation. Spell it another way, with a capital R , and it becomes for many a malediction; and for others an al ....

Middle of Essay
.... whose expense was the South's economy to be rebuilt? What was to be done with the freed slaves?"(Tindall 451) "Reconstruction was intended as a device by which the defeated states of the Southern Confederacy would be joined again to the Union, the more than four million black freedmen living within them absorbed politically and economically in a nation reunited by the force of arms, and safeguards provided against any possible renewal of rebellion."(Carter 11) Reconstruction officially began with Lincoln's Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction in 1863.(Tindall 452) Lincoln's "10 Percent Plan" ,as it was called, would allow a state to be admitt ....