heckled by persons in the 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