by two-thirds majorities in both
Houses. Then followed a series of legislative measures designed
substantially to substitute for the reconstruction work done by the
President a method of reconstruction based upon universal suffrage
including the negro vote, and to strip the President as much as possible
of all power to interfere. The first, upon the ground that life and
property were not safe under the existing provisional governments,
divided the late rebel States into five military divisions, each to be
under the command of a general officer who was to have the power to
declare martial law and to have offenders tried by military commission,
as the condition of public safety and order might seem to them to
require. Under their protection conventions were to be elected by
universal suffrage including the negro vote and excluding the
disqualified "rebel" vote, to frame new State constitutions containing
provision for the same sort of universal suffrage, such constitutions to
be subject to the approval of the people of the respective States and of
Congress. The State officers to be elected under these new constitutions
were, of course, to be elected by the same electorate, and the States
were to be regarded as entitled to representation in Congress, after
having ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to the National Constitution,
and after that Amendment had been ratified by a sufficient number of the
States generally to make it a valid part of the Constitution. A
supplementary reconstruction act gave the military commanders very
extensive control over the elections to be held, as to the registration
of voters, the mode of holding the elections, the appointment of
election officers, the canvassing of results, and the reporting of such
results to the President and through him to Congress. In order to strip
President Johnson of all power to interfere with the execution of this
measure beyond the appointment of the commanders of the various military
divisions, a provision was introduced in the Army Appropriation bill
which substantially ordained that all military orders and instructions
should be issued through the General of the Army (General Grant), who
was to have his headquarters at Washington; and that all orders and
instructions issued otherwise should be null and void. And when the
generals commanding the several divisions had expressed some doubt as
to the interpretation of some provisions of the Reconstruction Act, and
t