How did the nation continue on and prosper after the death of president lincoln?

Interesting Facts About The Lincoln Assassination

At the end of the Civil War two very different plans for reconstructing the nation were offered. Had Lincoln lived perhaps history would have different. The assassination of Lincoln, however, left the vulnerable Andrew Johnson, a Southerner and former slave owner with no college education, President. Could he live up to Lincoln's ideals? Would he be allowed the opportunity? That is the question.

After the Civil War congress was controlled by a group called the "Radical Republicans." Lincoln was able to control them and had proposed a plan for reconstruction that looked to treating the South more like a lost brother returning home. Lincoln looked to reconstruction as a time of healing. The Radical Republicans, however, looked at reconstruction as an opportunity to teach the South a lesson and to punish them. In 1866 Congress passed theWade-Davis Bill which called for rather draconian Reconstruction measures. Lincoln vetoed the bill but thedebate raged.

Lincoln would have been able to control the Radical Republicans, at least that is the conventional wisdom. Lincoln's death, however, left a void in leadership. The new President, Andrew Johnson, was a southerner. As you can imagine this bitter irony was not lost on the Radical Republicans who hated him even before he was President. Johnson proposed a plan similar to Lincoln's. Suffice it to say, congress was not amused. The relationship between Lincoln and Congress soured quickly.

Immediately following the Civil War, Southern states passed numerous laws restricting the rights of Blacks. They were known as the "Black codes". Mississippi, for example, barred interracial marriages. The punishment for such an act was death. Another code restricted the area in which Blacks could live. For example, Blacks could not own or rent land outside of an incorporated town. The purpose of this code was to undermine the efforts of the federal government in giving forty acres of land to former slaves. Many large plantations in the South were confiscated or abandoned. Much of this land was parceled out to slaves in forty acre allotments.

the earth’s crust is broken into separate pieces called tectonic plates (fig. 7.14). recall that the crust is the solid, rocky, outer shell of the planet. it is composed of two distinctly different types of material: the less-dense continental crust and the more-dense oceanic crust. both types of crust rest atop solid, upper mantle material. the upper mantle, in turn, floats on a denser layer of lower mantle that is much like thick molten tar.

each tectonic plate is free-floating and can move independently. earthquakes and volcanoes are the direct result of the movement of tectonic plates at fault lines. the term fault is used to describe the boundary between tectonic plates. most of the earthquakes and volcanoes around the pacific ocean basin—a pattern known as the “ring of fire”—are due to the movement of tectonic plates in this region. other observable results of short-term plate movement include the gradual widening of the great rift lakes in eastern africa and the rising of the himalayan mountain range. the motion of plates can be described in four general patterns:

collision: when two continental plates are shoved together

subduction: when one plate plunges beneath another (fig. 7.15)

spreading: when two plates are pushed apart (fig. 7.15)

transform faulting: when two plates slide past each other (fig. 7.15)