crowd, lost his temper,
denounced Congress and the radical leaders, and conducted himself in an
undignified manner. The election returns showed more than a two-thirds
majority in each House against the President. The Fortieth Congress
would therefore be safely radical, and in consequence the Thirty-ninth
was encouraged to be more radical during its last session.

Public interest now for a time turned to the South, where the Fourteenth
Amendment was before the state legislatures. The radicals, taunted with
having no plan of reconstruction beyond a desire to keep the Southern
States out of the Union, professed to see in the ratification of the
Fourteenth Amendment a good opportunity to readmit the States on a safe
basis. The elections of 1866 had pointed to the ratification of the
proposed amendment as an essential preliminary to readmission. But
would additional demands be made upon the South? Sumner, Stevens, and
Fessenden were sure that Negro suffrage also must come, but Wade, Chase,
Garfield, and others believed that nothing beyond the terms of the
Fourteenth Amendment would be asked.

In the Southern legislatures there was little disposition to ratify the
amendment. The rapid development of the radical policies during 1866 had
convinced most Southerners that nothing short of a general humiliation
and complete revolution in the South would satisfy the dominant party,
and there were few who wished to be "parties to our own dishonor." The
President advised the States not to accept the amendment, but several
Southern leaders favored it, fearing that worse would come if they
should reject it. Only in the legislatures of Alabama and Florida was
there any serious disposition to accept the amendment; and in the end
all the unreconstructed States voted adversely during the fall and
winter of 1866-67. This unanimity of action was due in part to the
belief that, even if the amendment were ratified, the Southern states
would still be excluded, and in part to the general dislike of the
proscriptive section which would disfranchise all Confederates of
prominence and result in the breaking up of the state governments.
The example of unhappy Tennessee, which had ratified the Fourteenth
Amendment and had been readmitted, was not one to encourage conservative
people in the other Southern states.

The rejection of the amendment put the question of reconstruction
squarely before Congress. There was no longer a possibility of
accompli