Provisional
governors were appointed, conventions were called, the State
constitutions were amended by the abolition of slavery and the
repudiation of the war debt, and the ordinances of secession were either
voided or repealed. When Congress met in December, 1865, the work had
been completed, the new State governments were in operation, and the
XIIIth Amendment, abolishing slavery, had been ratified by aid of their
votes. Congress, however, still refused to admit their Senators or
Representatives. The first action of many of the new governments had
been to pass labor, contract, stay, and vagrant laws which looked much
like a re-establishment of slavery, and the majority in Congress felt
that further guarantees for the security of the freedmen were necessary
before the war could be truly said to be over.

Early in 1866 President Johnson imprudently carried matters into an open
quarrel with Congress, which united the two thirds Republican majority
in both Houses against him. The elections of the autumn of 1866 showed
that the two thirds majorities were to be continued through the next
Congress; and in March, 1867, the first Reconstruction Act was passed
over the veto. It declared the existing governments in the seceding
States to be provisional only; put the States under military governors
until State conventions, elected with negro suffrage and excluding
the classes named in the proposed XIVth Amendment, should form a State
government satisfactory to Congress, and the State government should
ratify the XIVth Amendment; and made this rule of suffrage imperative
in all elections under the provisional governments until they should be
readmitted. This was a semi-voluntary reconstruction. In the same
month the new Congress, which met immediately on the adjournment of
its predecessor, passed a supplementary act. It directed the military
governors to call the conventions before September 1st following, and
thus enforced an involuntary reconstruction.

Tennessee had been readmitted in 1866. North Carolina, South Carolina,
Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas were reconstructed under the
acts, and were readmitted in 1868. Georgia was also readmitted, but was
remanded again for expelling negro members of her Legislature, and came
in under the secondary terms. Virginia, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas,
which had refused or broken the first terms, were admitted in 1870, on
the additional terms of ratifying the XVth Amendment