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 accomplishing the
reconstruction of the Southern states by means of constitutional amendments.
Some of the Border and Northern states were already showing signs of
uneasiness at the continued exclusion of the South. But if the Constitutional
Amendment had failed, other means of reconstruction were at hand, for the
radicals now controlled the Thirty-ninth Congress, from which the Southern
representatives were excluded, and would also control the Fortieth Congress.

Under the lead of Stevens and Sumner, the radicals now perfected their plans.
On January 8,1867, their first measure, conferring the franchise upon Negroes
in the District of Columbia, was passed over the presidential veto, though the
proposal had been voted down a few weeks earlier by a vote of 6525 to 35 in
Washington and 812 to 1 in Georgetown. In the next place, by an act of January
31, 1867, the franchise was extended to Negroes in the territories, and on
March 2, 1867, three important measures were enacted: the Tenure of Office Act
and a rider to the Army Appropriation Act--both designed to limit the power of
the President--and the first Reconstruction Act. By the Tenure of Office Act,
the President was prohibited from removing officeholders except with the
consent of the Senate; and by the Army Act he was forbidden to issue orders
except through General Grant or to relieve him of command or to assign him to
command away from Washington unless at the General's own request or with the
previous approval of the Senate. The first measure was meant to check the
removal of radical officeholders by Johnson, and the other, which was secretly