A joint committee was appointed to consider the terms of reconstruction of the Southern States, and until this committee should report, no action would be taken to seat the waiting legislators elect. Congress thus repudiated what Johnson had done toward reconstruction and made it clear that it regarded the restoration of seceded states to a full participation in government a matter for legislative and not executive decision. The Republican house leader, Thaddeus Stevens, was bitter against the South. He declared it to be his conviction that the Confederate states had been out of the Union, insisting that they were conquered territory, entirely under the disposition of Congress--a theory diametrically opposed to that of Abraham Lincoln and Johnson. Stevens attacked President Johnson’s policy in vigorous terms, denouncing it from every standpoint. Secretary of State Seward sought to have the subject brought into amicable discussion, but his efforts to get a friendly or even unbiassed hearing for the administration policy not only failed utterly but aroused a bitter contest that was aggravated on both sides by the persistent lampooning of the Chief Executive by the foreign press. [Illustration: _Photo. by Brady_ ANDREW JOHNSON’S FIRST TAILOR SHOP Now a Museum in Greeneville, Tennessee] [Illustration: _Photos. by Brady_ THE GRAND REVIEW OF THE ARMIES OF THE NORTH Washington, May 23rd, 24th, 1865. Reviewed by President Johnson and Cabinet and General Grant] Party lines were drawn so tight that arbitration was out of the question. Senator Sumner then came forward with another suggestion, which held that, while no state could legally go out of the Union, yet, by its act of rebellion, it had lost its status as a state. This was often referred to as his State Suicide theory. He also insisted that under this plan it could be restored only by the united effort of its own loyal element and Congress. Under the leadership of Stevens and Sumner, Congress finally decided this momentous question, rejecting the theory of President Lincoln and also the radical view of Stevens. Republican leaders repudiated past professions and declarations upon which the North had so thoroughly agreed in the conduct of the war. Through the winter of 1866 and until the end of the session, antagonism to President Johnson continued to grow.