of the two-thirds required
for conviction.

=Congress Enacts "Reconstruction Laws."=--In fact, Congress was in a
strategic position. It was the law-making body, and it could, moreover,
determine the conditions under which Senators and Representatives from
the South were to be readmitted. It therefore proceeded to pass a series
of reconstruction acts--carrying all of them over Johnson's veto. These
measures, the first of which became a law on March 2, 1867, betrayed an
animus not found anywhere in Lincoln's plans or Johnson's proclamations.

They laid off the ten states--the whole Confederacy with the exception
of Tennessee--still outside the pale, into five military districts, each
commanded by a military officer appointed by the President. They ordered
the commanding general to prepare a register of voters for the election
of delegates to conventions chosen for the purpose of drafting new
constitutions. Such voters, however, were not to be, as Lincoln had
suggested, loyal persons duly qualified under the law existing before
secession but "the male citizens of said state, twenty-one years old and
upward, of whatever race, color, or previous condition, ... except such
as may be disfranchised for participation in the rebellion or for felony
at common law." This was the death knell to the idea that the leaders of
the Confederacy and their white supporters might be permitted to share
in the establishment of the new order. Power was thus arbitrarily thrust
into the hands of the newly emancipated male negroes and the handful of
whites who could show a record of loyalty. That was not all. Each state
was, under the reconstruction acts, compelled to ratify the fourteenth
amendment to the federal Constitution as a price of restoration to the
union.

The composition of the conventions thus authorized may be imagined.
Bondmen without the asking and without preparation found themselves the
governing power. An army of adventurers from the North, "carpet baggers"
as they were called, poured in upon the scene to aid in
"reconstruction." Undoubtedly many men of honor and fine intentions gave
unstinted service, but the results of their deliberations only
aggravated the open wound left by the war. Any number of political
doctors offered their prescriptions; but no effective remedy could be
found. Under measures admittedly open to grave objections, the Southern
states were one after another restored to the union by the grace of
Congres