The President's argument fell, however, upon deaf ears. This was, it is true, the second session of the Thirty-ninth Congress, and was not, therefore, composed of the persons just elected; but the influence of the recent elections over its members had been to cow the conservatives, strengthen the radicals, and cause the wavering to incline to the side of the extremists. They took the {106} verdict of the people to be that Congress should ignore the President's work in Reconstruction, develop a plan of its own, put it into operation, and base it upon a newly constructed electorate in the South, in which the lately emancipated should participate. The attitude of the legislatures of the President's reconstructed "States" in regard to the proposed Fourteenth Amendment also strengthened them greatly in this view and purpose. Before the first day of January, 1867, all of these except three had rejected it by overwhelming votes, and these three followed the same course a little later. It was said and believed in Washington that they had rejected the proposed Amendment contemptuously, and under the advice of the President of the United States. It was the angry rejection of the proposed Amendment which did more than anything and everything else to convince the people of the North that Reconstruction must be now undertaken by Congress, and must proceed upon the basis of a new electorate at the South which Congress should create. {107} CHAPTER VII THE CONGRESSIONAL PLAN (_Completed_) Negro Suffrage in the District of Columbia--The First Attempts at Impeachment--Stories of Outrages at the South--The Reconstruction Bill--Passage of the Bill by the House--The Bill as Finally Agreed upon--The Condition that the Fourteenth Amendment must be Ratified by a Sufficient Number of "States" to make it a Part of the Constitution--The Tenure-of-Office Bill--The Supplementary Reconstruction Bill--The Assignment of the Commanding Generals to the Military Districts Created by the Reconstruction Acts--The Re-establishment of Martial Law in the South--The President's Instructions to the Generals in Interpretation of the Reconstruction Acts--The Congressional Interpretation of the Reconstruction Acts--The President's Veto of the Bill Interpreting the Reconstruction Acts--The Veto Overridden--The Suspension of Stanton from Office. [Sidenote: Negro suffrage in the District of Columbia.]