l incoln’s s hadow 71
lay down their arms. Accordingly, under his own authority as com-
mander in chief, in 1862 he established a policy that would permit the
restoration of state government as soon as 10 percent of the total of the
1860 electorate took an oath of loyalty, with only senior Confederate
civil and military offi cials excluded from the terms. Th ose who swore
the oath received presidential pardons. On these generous terms,
Reconstruction governments were organized in Tennessee, Arkansas,
and Louisiana. With only a narrow majority in Congress in December
1862, Republicans agreed to seat the Louisiana delegation. Emanci-
pation in 1863 did not alter Lincoln’s basic approach, but he added the
condition that the restored state governments agree to abolish slavery, a
move that met with public and Republican Party approval. Still, even
the new qualifi cation implied nothing about the rights or status of
former slaves; for the president, such matters were better addressed
later, after the return of peace.
Lincoln’s Reconstruction formula set him on a collision course with
many in his own party who viewed the 10 percent threshold as an invi-
tation to restore not merely a state government but the system of priv-
ilege and racial subordination that was the root cause of the rebellion.
Committed now to the president’s hard war, his Radical foes were
unwilling to countenance a soft peace. Th ey were spurred especially by
mounting complaints from blacks in and around New Orleans, where
the local Union commander, General Nathaniel Banks, had imposed a
harsh regimen on former slaves that forced them to sign annual labor
contracts with their former masters that provided low wages and gave
the workers no protections. Radicals and some Republican moderates
coalesced in 1864 behind the Wade-Davis Bill, which set the bar for the
restoration of state government at 50 percent of the prewar electorate.
Such a fi gure could be achieved only if a signifi cant number of former
slaves were allowed to vote.
Although Radicals accepted black suff rage, the president did not, at
least at that point. The Wade-Davis Bill passed in Congress in the
waning days of the session, but Lincoln declined to sign it and the
measure died. Politics guided his handling of the Wade-Davis chal-
lenge. In summer 1864, with an uphill battle for reelection looming, the
president was not prepared to go before the northern electorate as an
advocate of extending the franchise to former slaves. Given that some