Lincoln's plans for the Restoration began even before the end of the war. Lincoln was motivated by a desire to build a strong Republican Party in the South and to end the anguish caused by the war. On December 8, 1863, Lincoln issued a Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction for the areas of the Southern Confederacy that would support the United States Constitution and pledge allegiance to the Union. Lincoln's plan called for pardons for any state and would be allowed to rejoin the union when ten percent of the people who voted in the 1860 election took an oath of allegiance to the union and would have to abide by all laws including prohibition of slavery, and even said that high-ranking Confederate officials and military leaders would be temporarily excluded from the trial. Few states reacted quickly to this “plan” and even established governments based on these terms. However, the Radical Republicans disagreed with Lincoln's plan due to the fact that it did not guarantee equal rights for freed slaves. Postwar radical republicans were interested in major factors such as desire ...