to act as a
clearing house for the radical "facts" about "Southern outrages" while
waiting for the tide to turn. The "Black Laws" and the election of
popular Confederate leaders to office in the South were effectively used
to alarm the friends of the Negroes, and the reports from the
Bureau agents gave support to those who condemned the Southern state
governments as totally inadequate and disloyal.

So apparent was the growth of radicalism that the President, alarmed by
the attitude of Sumner and Stevens and their followers, began to fear
for the Constitution and forced the fight. The passage of a bill on
February 6, 1866, extending the life of the Freedmen's Bureau furnished
the occasion for the beginning of the open struggle. On the 19th of
February, Johnson vetoed the bill, and the next day an effort was made
to pass it over the veto. Not succeeding in this attempt, the House
of Representatives adopted a concurrent resolution that Senators and
Representatives from the Southern states should be excluded until
Congress declared them entitled to representation. Ten days later the
Senate also adopted the resolution.

Though it was not yet too late for Johnson to meet the conservatives
of Congress on middle ground, he threw away his opportunity by an
intemperate and undignified speech on the 22d of February to a crowd at
the White House. As usual when excited, he forgot the proprieties and
denounced the radicals as enemies of the Union and even went so far
as to charge Stevens, Sumner, and Wendell Phillips with endeavoring
to destroy the fundamental principles of the government. Such conduct
weakened his supporters and rejoiced his enemies. It was expected that
Johnson would approve the bill to confer civil rights upon the Negroes,
but, goaded perhaps by the speeches of Stevens, he vetoed it on the 27th
of March. Its patience now exhausted, Congress passed the bill over
the President's veto. To secure the requisite majority in the Senate,
Stockton, Democratic Senator from New Jersey, was unseated on technical
grounds, and Senator Morgan, who was "paired" with a sick colleague,
broke his word to vote aye--for which Wade offensively thanked God. The
moderates had now fallen away from the President, and at least for this
session of Congress, his policies were wrecked. On the 16th of July, the
supplementary Freedmen's Bureau Act was passed over the veto, and on
the 24th of July Tennessee was readmitted to representation by a