In his inaugural address he urged the States to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment, and its ratification was due, probably, to his advice. At that moment his influence was very great. It may well be doubted whether any other President ever enjoyed the confidence of the country in as high a degree. He gave to that measure the weight of his opinion and the official influence of his administration. The amendment was opposed by the Democratic Party generally, and a considerable body of Republicans questioned its wisdom. General Grant was responsible for the ratification of the amendment. Had he advised its rejection, or had he been indifferent to its fate, the amendment would have failed, and the country would have been left to a succession of bitter controversies arising from the application of the second section of the Fourteenth Amendment, which provided that the representation of a State should be based upon the number of male citizens over twenty-one years of age entitled to vote. General Grant accepted the plan of Congress in regard to the reconstruction of the Union. There were three opinions that had obtained a lodgment in the public mind. President Johnson and his supporters claimed that the President held the power by virtue of his office to convene the people of the respective States, and that under his direction constitutions might be framed, and that Senators and Representatives might be chosen who would be entitled to seats in Congress, as though they represented States that had not been engaged in secession and war. Others maintained that neither by the ordinances of secession nor by the war had the States of the Confederacy been disturbed in their legal relations to the Union. It was the theory of the Republican Party in Congress that the eleven States by their own acts had destroyed their legal relations to the Union; that the jurisdiction of the National Government over the territory of the seceding States was full and complete; and that, as a result of the war, the National Government could hold them in a Territorial condition and subject to military rule. Upon this theory the re-appearance of a seceded State as a member of the Union was made to depend upon the assent of Congress, with the approval of the President, or upon an act of Congress by a two-thirds vote over a Presidential veto.