Note p. 454 n — INDEX.

[265] Among these may be enumerated the Civil Rights Bill, which gave the negroes citizenship with suffrage (1866), and the Second Freedmen’s Bureau Bill, which was designed to help the former slaves by securing them employment and in other ways (1866). The Fourteenth Amendment was also disapproved by the President, and, of course, the congressional plan of reconstruction. Congress, by a “rider” to the Army Appropriation Bill, really deprived the President of his power as commander in chief; and by adopting measures which enabled a new Congress to meet immediately after the expiration of its predecessor, took away from the President all opportunity to act upon his own judgment during the interim between Congresses. In other words, the radical members of Congress were so determined to carry out their policy that in the two measures last enumerated and in the Tenure of Office Act they overleaped the Constitution and practically set up a revolutionary government of their own. On the other hand, the President’s breach of courtesy in delivering harangues against Congress, at various points in the country, was highly exasperating.