eighty-five representatives and a slight reaction in the North, they might
gain control of the lower House of Congress. The Union-Republican party had a
majority of less than one hundred in 1866, and this was lessened slightly in
the Fortieth Congress. The President was for all practical purposes a Democrat
again. The prospect was too much for the very human politicians to view
without distress. Stevens, speaking in support of the Military Reconstruction
Bill, said:

"There are several good reasons for the passage of this bill. In the first
place, it is just. I am now confining my argument to Negro suffrage in the
rebel states. Have not loyal blacks quite as good a right to choose rulers and
make laws as rebel whites? In the second place, it is necessary in order to
protect the loyal white men in the seceded states. With them the blacks would
act in a body, and it is believed that in each of these states, except one,
the two united would form a majority, control the states, and protect
themselves. Now they are the victims of daily murder. They must suffer
constant persecution or be exiled. Another good reason is that it would insure
the ascendancy of the union party .... I believe . . . that on the continued
ascendancy of that party depends the safety of this great nation. If impartial
suffrage is excluded in the rebel states, then every one of them is sure to
send a solid rebel electoral vote. They, with their kindred Copperheads of the
North, would always elect the President and control Congress."

The laws passed on the 2d and the 23d of March were war measures and
presupposed a continuance of war conditions. The Lincoln-Johnson state
governments were overturned; Congress fixed the qualifications of voters for
that time and for the future; and the President, shorn of much of his
constitutional power, could exercise but little control over the military
government. Nothing that a state might do would secure restoration until it
should ratify the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution. The war