President Lincoln saw Reconstruction as a way of bringing the South back into the Union as soon as possible. This put him at odds with radical members of his own party, who regarded Southerners as traitors who needed to be severely punished for taking up arms against the Union and causing a bitter and bloody Civil War.

But Lincoln believed that public opinion was firmly on his side, and that most people, both North and South, would, once the War was finally over, want to move on and put aside their differences. To this end, he put forward a Reconstruction plan which, by anyone's standards, was remarkably lenient, all things considered.

Under what became known as the "ten-percent plan," Southern states could be readmitted to the Union if just ten percent of its registered voters swore an oath of allegiance to the United States. Critics saw this as excessively lenient, as it set a low bar for re-admittance to the Union.

However, it should be noted that Lincoln's ten-percent plan was conceived while the Civil War was still ongoing and was more of a political tactic designed to help bring the War to a speedy close than a detailed blueprint for post-war Reconstruction.