in each house of Congress, with which to override vetoes.

As if impelled by some perverse fate the southern whites during the fall
and winter of 1866-67 did the thing for which the bitterest enemy of the
South might have wished. Except in Tennessee, the legislature of every
confederate state refused with almost complete unanimity to ratify the
Fourteenth Amendment. Natural as the act was, it gave the North
apparently overwhelming proof that the former "rebels" were still
defiant. Encouraged by the results of the election and aroused by the
attitude of the South toward the Amendment, Congress proceeded to
encroach upon prerogatives that had hitherto been considered purely
executive, and also to pass a most extreme plan of reconstruction.

The first of these measures, the Tenure of Office Act, was passed over a
veto on March 2, 1867. By it the President was forbidden to remove civil
officers except with the consent of the Senate. Even the members of the
Cabinet could not be dismissed without the permission of the upper
house, a provision inserted for the protection of Edwin M. Stanton, the
Secretary of War. Stanton was in sympathy with the radical leaders in
Congress and it was essential to them that he be kept in this post of
advantage. General Grant, who had charge of the military establishment,
was made almost independent of the President by a law drafted secretly
by Stanton. On the same day, and over a veto also, was passed the
Reconstruction Act, the most important piece of legislation during the
decade after the war. It represented the desires of Thaddeus Stevens and
was passed mainly because of his masterful leadership. At the outset the
new Act declared the existing southern state governments to be illegal
and inadequate, and divided the South into five military districts. Over
each was to be a commanding general who should preserve order, and
continue civil officers and civil courts, or replace them with military