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 presidential
disregard, was eager for extremes. Johnson, who regarded himself as defending
the Constitution against radical assaults, was stubborn, irascible, and
undignified, and with his associates was no match in political strategy for
his radical opponents.

The average Republican or Unionist in the North, if he had not been brought by
skillful misrepresentation to believe a new rebellion impending in the South,
was at any rate painfully alive to the fear that the Democratic party might
regain power. With the freeing of the slaves, the representation of the South
in Congress would be increased. At first it seemed that the South might divide
in politics as before the war, but the longer the delay the more the Southern
whites tended to unite into one party acting with the Democrats. With their