aw that a State might be readmitted to representation upon the
following conditions: a constitutional convention must be held, the
members of which were elected by males of voting age without regard
to color, excluding whites who would be disfranchised by the proposed
Fourteenth Amendment; a constitution including the same rule of suffrage
must be framed, ratified by the same electorate, and approved by
Congress; and lastly, the legislatures elected under this constitution
must ratify the proposed Fourteenth Amendment, after which, if
the Fourteenth Amendment should have become a part of the Federal
Constitution, the State should be readmitted to representation.

In order that the administration of this radical legislation might be
supervised by its friends, the Thirty-ninth Congress had passed a law
requiring the Fortieth Congress to meet on the 4th of March instead of
in December as was customary. According to the Reconstruction Act of the
2nd of March, it was left to the state government or to the people of a
state to make the first move towards reconstruction. If they preferred,
they might remain under military rule. Either by design or by
carelessness no machinery of administration was provided for the
execution of the act. When it became evident that the Southerners
preferred military rule, the new Congress passed a Supplementary
Reconstruction Act on the 23d of March designed to force the earlier act
into operation. The five commanding generals were directed to register
the blacks of voting age and the whites who were not disfranchised,
to hold elections for conventions, to call the conventions, to hold
elections to ratify or reject the constitutions, and to forward the
constitutions, if ratified, to the President for transmission to
Congress.

In these reconstruction acts the whole doctrine of radicalism was put on
the way to accomplishment. Its spread had been rapid. In December 1865,
the majority of Congress would have accepted with little modification
the work of Lincoln and Johnson. Three months later the Civil Rights Act
measured the advance. Very soon the new Freedmen's Bureau Act and
the Fourteenth Amendment indicated the rising tide of radicalism. The
campaign of 1866 and the attitude of the Southern states swept all
radicals and most moderate Republicans swiftly into a merciless course
of reconstruction. Moderate reconstruction had nowhere strong support.
Congress, touched in its amour propre by presid