The Republican majority in Congress soon advanced from the position taken in the Crittenden-Johnson resolutions. Most of the Republican party had no fixed opinions in regard to Reconstruction, but formed a kind of a centre or swamp between the Democrats and the President on the one extreme, and the Radicals on the other. The plan of Lincoln, as first announced and applied, was offensive to all parties, and some leaders never seem to have recognized that the President had, to any appreciable degree, modified his policy. The extreme Radicals were not sorry to have the matter of reconstruction fall from the hands of the wise and kind Lincoln into those of the narrow and vindictive Johnson. But the seeming defection of the latter soon disappointed those who were in favor of harsh measures in dealing with the defeated southerners. The best-known of the Radical theories advanced in opposition to the presidential policy were (1) the State Suicide theory of Charles Sumner, (2) the Conquered Province theory of Thaddeus Stevens, and (3) the Forfeited Rights theory, practically the same as the Conquered Province theory, but expressed in less definite language for the benefit of the more timid members of the Republican party. Charles Sumner, the Radical leader of the Senate, set forth the Suicide theory in a series of resolutions to the effect that the ordinances of secession were void, and, when sustained by force, amounted to abdication by the state of all constitutional rights; that the treason involved worked instant destruction of the body politic, and the state became territory under the exclusive control of Congress. Consequently, there were no state governments in the South, and all peculiar institutions had ceased to exist--among them slavery. Sumner constantly asserted that Congress now had exclusive jurisdiction over the southern territory.[863] He made strong objection to the despotic power of the President as applied in dealing with the seceded states, and declared that the executive was encroaching upon the sphere of Congress, which was the proper authority to organize the new governments. The seceded states, he affirmed, by breaking the constitutional compact had committed suicide, and no longer had corporate existence, and that the "loyalists," who were few in number, should not have the power formerly possessed by all. The whole South was a "tabular rasa," "a clean slate," upon which Congress might write the laws.[864] The existence of slavery was declared to be incompatible with a republican form of government, which it was the duty of Congress to establish. For it is necessary to such a form of government that there be absolute equality before the law, suffrage for all, education for all, the choice of "loyal" citizens for office, and the exclusion of "rebels." The negro must take part in Reconstruction, for his vote would be needed to support the cause of human rights and "the party of the Union"--meaning,