One year later, December 2, 1862, a third attempt[15] was made by Mr. Davis, who submitted a joint resolution in the Senate (S. 104), proposing a convention from all the States to devise means for the reconstruction of the Union, and on May 30, 1864, Mr. Lazear submitted in the House, resolutions which were to authorize the President to "adopt or agree upon some plan upon which the decision of the great body of the people north and south may be secured upon the question of calling a convention composed of delegates from all the States, to which shall be referred the settlement of all questions now dividing the southern States from the rest of the Union, with a view to the restoration of the several States to the places they were intended to occupy in the Union." During the later years of the war, after hope of success had begun to die out, some of the Southern States looked very favorably upon the plan; but nothing approximating such a convention resulted.[16] 4. At the beginning of his term of office, President Lincoln held the then prevailing belief in the supremacy of the States in all matters not directly under federal control, and as a matter of course believed that at the cessation of hostilities each State should immediately resume its old relations to the government, its local matters untouched by the central administration.[17] But the ability of Lincoln to modify his own beliefs on any subject as his experience widened was never better manifested than on this very question, and had he lived to control the administration through the period of reconstruction, it is not unreasonable to suppose that his attitude would have undergone still greater change. As the magnitude of the struggle became more apparent, he began to deliberate upon the advisability of striking at the root of the evil, despite the blow it struck at state liberty, and the two proclamations of September 22, 1862, and January 1, 1863,[18] mark the basis of the executive plan of reconstruction. The Pierpoint government of Virginia had been recognized in 1861, but its recognition was in harmony with the early attitude of Congress towards the States, and involved no questions which could show a distinct executive policy.