There is no gainsaying that this was good reasoning, but Congress was in no frame of mind to give ear to the counsel of the President. It took the ground that in legislating for the District it was acting for the whole United States and not simply for the inhabitants of the District, and that there was no place in the entire country where political experiments could be more safely tried than in the District, since Congress had plenary legislative power in the District and could discover and correct mistakes and defects in its legislation more easily and promptly there than anywhere else.
Both Houses repassed the bill over the President's veto by the necessary two-thirds majority, the Senate on the 7th of January and the
The first attempts
at impeachment.
At the same time the halls of Congress were ringing with the most extravagant tales of outrages against the negroes and loyal men of the
Stories of outrages
at the South.
While, as we have seen, the Congress did not pass the proposition to make the acceptance of the proposed Fourteenth Amendment by the newly
The Fourteenth
Amendment as the
condition of
recognizing the
revival of statehood.
There can be no question in the mind of any sound political scientist and constitutional lawyer that Congress was in the right, logically,