Even before the war ended, President Lincoln began the task of
restoration. Motivated by a desire to build a strong Republican
party in the South and to end the bitterness engendered by war,
he issued (Dec. 8, 1863) a proclamation of amnesty and
reconstruction for those areas of the Confederacy occupied by
Union armies. It offered pardon, with certain exceptions, to any
Confederate who would swear to support the Constitution and the
Union. Once a group in any conquered state equal in number to
one tenth of that state's total vote in the presidential
election of 1860 took the prescribed oath and organized a
government that abolished slavery, he would grant that
government executive recognition. Lincoln's plan aroused the
sharp opposition of the radicals in Congress, who believed it
would simply restore to power the old planter aristocracy. They
passed (July, 1864) the Wade-Davis Bill, which required 50% of a
state's male voters to take an "ironclad" oath that they had
never voluntarily supported the Confederac