President Johnson had been repudiated in the…

President Johnson had been repudiated in the congressional elections of November, 1866, and Congress, still controlled by Radical Republicans, passes the First Reconstruction Act, over Johnson's veto, on March 2, dividing the South into five military districts subject to martial law, and providing conditions for restoration to Union: new constitutional state conventions, universal manhood suffrage, Negro suffrage, and ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Supplementary Reconstruction Acts will require military commanders to initiate voter enrollment, with the power to discriminate between voters and officeholders, and to declare that a majority of votes cast, regardless of numbers participating, is sufficient to insure legality of new state constitutions.

The Tenure of Office Act, passed at the same time, again over Johnson's veto, forbids the president to remove civil officers without senatorial consent.

The act seems aimed specifically at preventing President Johnson from removing from office Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, the Radicals' ally in the Cabinet, although during congressional debate on the bill some Republicans had declared that Cabinet members would be exempt.

With Reconstruction virtually taken out of his hands, President Johnson, by exercising his veto and by narrowly interpreting the law, manages to delay the program so seriously that he contributes materially to its failure.

He maintains that the Reconstruction acts are unconstitutional because they are passed without Southern representation in Congress.