The majority report indicated, at least, that Congress might require something more than adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment by the communities lately in rebellion before they would be recognized as having been restored to their proper relations in the Union as "States," and entitled to representation in Congress. At the moment, however, it is probable that a prompt adoption of {87} the proposed Amendment by any of the reconstructed legislatures would have been followed by a joint resolution on the part of Congress similar to that enacted in the case of Tennessee. There is no doubt that many of the more radical members of Congress had been long considering the question of creating an entirely new electorate in the South as the only proper basis for reconstruction, and that some of the conservatives, from being opponents of this idea at the beginning of the year, had, by the middle of it, begun, at least, to waver. To those who could read the signs of the times correctly, it was manifest that a rejection of the proposed Fourteenth Amendment by these communities would lead Congress forward upon that line. The President ought to have understood this, when Mr. Raymond voted for the proposed Amendment in the House. He ought to have done all in his power to influence the reconstructed communities to adopt the proposed Amendment, no matter whether the submission of it to them by the Secretary of State of the United States logically involved their recognition as "States" of the Union by the Administration at Washington, or not. They were not in a position to exact the precise conclusion of a logical process in their favor, especially as it was based on a fallacious premise, and the President did both himself and them a great wrong in not discouraging them from so doing. [Sidenote: The Freedmen's Bureau Act of July 16th, 1866.]