After the American Civil War, the South still needed to rebuild itself since it suffered much damage. The Reconstruction 1865 -1877 was the era after the Civil War that the Union tried to transform the South to their liking and bring the South back to the Union. Reconstruction brought many changes to the South. President Lincoln proposed that if 10 of voters in a Southern state took an oath to pledge allegiance to the Union then the pledgers would be pardoned and the Southern state could begin forming a new state government that outlawed slavery in 1865. Proclamation of Amnesty Congress proposed that Reconstruction should wait until half of the Southern state's voters pledged loyalty to the Union. The Wade Davis Bill was proposed to Congress by Senator Benjamin F Wade and Representative Henry Winter Davis in February 1864 it stated that half the voters should take the oath and the state should give the state to vote before Reconstruction.
