The first session of the Thirty-ninth Congress convened on December 4, 1865, with a large majority of Republicans in both House and Senate, and both bodies in a very angry mood over the action of the President in proceeding with the Reconstruction without their advice or consent, and they were more enraged with the extreme and rash policies adopted by the Southern Legislatures. To add to this bitter feeling came the application of the Southern Senators and Representatives, many of whom less than a year before had been engaged in active rebel-loin, to be admitted to their seats. These applicants were refused admission by both branches of Congress. The House and Senate appointed Reconstruction Committees, and the debate immediately began on the great question. It was seen at once that the Republican Party would totally ignore the President's policy and all that had been done under it. The breach widened between the President and Congress, when an Act to enlarge the provisons of the Freedmen's Bureau Bill (passed March 3, 1865) came up. The object of this Bill was to provide for the destitute and suffering refugees and freedmen and their wives and children. The new Bill was promptly passed, but on February 19, 1866, was vetoed by the President; the Senate failed to pass the Bill over the veto, but later in the year (July, 1866) the measure went through Congress in a slightly altered form, was vetoed by the President and passed over his veto. The Civil Rights Bill, to secure to the freed negroes in the South all of the rights enjoyed by the white man, except suffrage, was also vetoed by the President on March 27, 1866, and on April 9th was passed over his veto. [Illustration: Andrew Johnson.] The Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery, had been declared a part of the Constitution on December 18, 1865, and the great work of the Emancipation Proclamation was thus completed. The Reconstruction Committee now reported the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, fixing the status of citizens, the basis of representation, etc., and also a Bill declaring that when the Amendment had become part of the Constitution any of the late Confederate States, upon ratifying it, would be allowed representation in Congress, to all of which the President expressed his disapproval. The various presidential vetoes completely broke off any possible chance of harmony between the President and Congress, and in addition to them, the President indulged in a number of rash speeches in which Congress was condemned in no very elegant terms. On February 22, 1866, the President, in a speech at the White House, denounced Congress bitterly for its opposition, and referred in an abusive way to several prominent Republican leaders by name, and he followed this up during the late Summer months by several coarse speeches in Western cities while he was on his way to the dedication of a monument to Stephen A. Douglas at Chicago.