Each party considered the other the aggressor. The Republicans of the North viewed the massacre as a new rebellion, while the amnestied Southerners considered the riot the result of a justified resistance to an attempt to force negro suffrage and then negro rule upon them. It is very nearly certain that the first shot was fired by a negro, but this would not justify the wholesale massacre executed by the police. It could, therefore, be held by the Republicans with a great show of truth that the public authorities of the reconstructed "State" government of Louisiana not only would not extend the equal protection of the laws to all persons, but would themselves deprive persons even of life without due process of law. [Sidenote: The issue of Reconstruction in the campaign of 1866.] The issue of the campaign of 1866 was thus made up. It was simply whether Congress should reconstruct the President's reconstructed "States," or rather should pronounce the President's Reconstruction, and the Reconstruction effected by the amnestied Southerners, null and void, and proceed to do the work _de novo_, with the purpose of creating adequate guarantee for life and property and for the equal protection of the laws to all. Although it was not a Presidential year, the election of the members of the House of Representatives with such a problem to deal with, and the election of "State" legislatures which would consider the question of adopting the proposed Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, made the canvass of 1866 a truly national {99} one. Four National Conventions were held during the summer and early autumn, two of each party. [Sidenote: The National Conventions of the summer of 1866.]