Undoubtedly, in some of the baser minds among them, the determination to create Republican party "States" in the South was a very weighty consideration, but just as undoubtedly the consideration with the majority of them was the conviction that the work of the four years of war might have to be done all over again unless a new political people, a new body of suffrage holders, should be created at the South, whose members had never been disloyal. But even from this point of view again, it is difficult to understand how they could have failed to see that the Constitution required that this should be done through the forms of Territorial civil government, instead of through the forms of martial law. Put the best light upon their conduct that is possible, there is still left the conviction that the fanaticism of extreme partisanship had an undue influence over them all. {128} The contest with the President had blinded their perceptions as to the morality, legality and propriety of the means they were willing to employ in securing the victory over him. [Sidenote: Congressional encroachment on the President's military prerogatives.] As this contest developed it dwarfed, to say the least, all other considerations. Even as late as when the Reconstruction bill was passed, the majority of the Republicans refused to vote to take the President's military prerogatives from him. In less than a fortnight from this time, however, they voted, in a section of the Army Appropriation bill, "that the head-quarters of the General of the army of the United States shall be at the city of Washington, and all orders and instructions relating to military operations issued by the President or Secretary of War shall be issued through the General of the army, and, in case of his inability, through the next in rank. The General of the army shall not be removed, suspended, or relieved from command, or assigned to duty elsewhere than at said head-quarters, except at his own request, without the previous approval of the Senate; and any orders or instructions relating to military operations issued contrary to the requirements of this section shall be null and void; and any officer who shall issue orders or instructions contrary to the provisions of this section shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor in office; and any officer of the army who shall transmit, convey, or obey any orders or instructions so issued contrary to the provisions of this section, knowing that such orders were so issued, shall be liable to imprisonment for not less than two nor more than twenty years, upon conviction in any court of competent jurisdiction."