Studies in American History 
311 
sition came from the Democrats. The amendment was rati- 
fied by both houses by a strictly partisan vote.^^ 
Meanwhile, the short session of the Thirty-ninth Congress 
met in December, 1866. The advocates of the congressional 
plan of reconstruction felt their position greatly strengthened 
by the outcome of the election of 1866. The rejection of the 
Fourteenth Amendment by all the southern states except Ten- 
nessee played into the hands of the radicals.-^ The result was 
the passage of the Reconstruction Act of March 2, 1867, pro- 
viding for military reconstruction and negro suffrage. The 
vote of the Indiana delegation was along party lines. The 
Republicans supported the measure and the Democrats op- 
posed it. 
The Journal sought to justify the action of Congress in 
the following manner: 
They went out of the Union of their own free will and without 
provocation, labored to destroy it for us as well as themselves, and now 
we have done our duty magnanimously, mercifully in pointing them to a 
plain easy way to come back which restores them all their rights without 
endangering ours. We have a right to do that, and they have no right 
to ask more.^® 
The bill providing for military reconstruction had no 
greater opponent than Thomas A. Hendricks. He tried in 
vain to get some amendments added in order to mitigate, 
as he said, some of the evils of the measure. '‘Some of these 
states’’, he declared, 
helped to form the Union, they helped to fight the battles of the 
Revolution, and were parties to that great convention that made the Con- 
stitution which established the Union. I do not believe they have ever 
been out of the Union. I am fixed in that opinion."^ 
The Fortieth Congress assembled on March 4, 1867, immedi- 
ately after the adjournment of the Thirty-ninth. For the 
third time Schuyler Colfax was chosen speaker of the House 
of Representatives. It was at this time that Oliver P. Mor- 
ton took his seat in the Senate, succeeding Henry S. Lane. 
Morton was originally a conservative in his views on recon- 
struction. He had favored Lincoln’s plan and later, as noted 
above, had approved of Johnson’s plan. He had vigorously 
Brevier Legislative Repwts (Indianapolis, 1867), IX, 43-46: 
25 Woodburn, The Life of Thaddeus Stevens, 433. 
^^Indianapolis Daily Joatrnal, February 25, 1867. 
^ Congressional Globe, 39 Cong., 2 Sess., 1385-1388. 
