During the Civil War, some Republican leaders argued that slavery and the Slave Power had to be permanently destroyed, and that all forms of Confederate nationalism had to be suppressed. Moderates said this could be easily accomplished as soon as Confederate armies surrendered and the Southern states repealed secession and accepted the 13th Amendment (by December 1865). President Abraham Lincoln was the leader of the moderate Republicans and wanted to speed up Reconstruction and reunite the nation as painlessly and as quickly as possible. Lincoln formally began Reconstruction in late 1863 with his Ten percent plan, which went into operation in several states but which Radicals opposed. Lincoln vetoed the Radical Wade-Davis Bill of 1864, which was much more strict than the Ten-Percent Plan. The opposing faction of Radical Republicans were skeptical of Southern intentions and demanded more stringent federal action. Congressman Thaddeus Stevens and Senator Charles Sumner led the Radical Republicans. Radical Republican Charles Sumner argued that secession had destroyed statehood alone but the Constitution still extended its authority and its protection over individuals, as in the territories. Thaddeus Stevens and his followers viewed secession as having left the states in a status like newly conquered territory. The Republicans sought to prevent Southern politicians from "restoring the historic subordination of Negroes." Since slavery was dead, the 3/5 rule no longer applied, and after the 1870 census the South would gain additional representatives in Congress. One Illinois Republican expressed his fears that if the South were allowed to simply restore its previous established powers, that the "reward of treason will be an increased representation". Upon Lincoln's assassination in April 1865, Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, who had been elected with Lincoln in 1864 on the ticket of the National Union Party as vice president, became president. Johnson rejected the Radical program of harsh, lengthy Reconstruction and instead appointed his own governors and tried to finish the process of reconstruction by the end of 1865. By early 1866, full-scale political warfare existed between Johnson (now allied with the Democrats) and the Radicals; he vetoed laws and issued orders that contradicted Congressional legislation. Congress rejected Johnson's argument that he had the war power to decide what to do, since the war was over. Congress decided it had the primary authority to decide how Reconstruction should proceed, because the Constitution stated the United States had to guarantee each state a republican form of government. The Radicals insisted that meant Congress decided how Reconstruction should be achieved. The issues were multiple: who should decide, Congress or the president? How should republicanism operate in the South? What was the status of the Confederate states? What was the citizenship status of men who had supported the Confederacy? What was the citizenship and suffrage status of freedmen? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_era_of_the_United_States