The response throughout the North, in the mouths of the loyal people, was in effect: "If these rebel States are not willing now to resume representation on the terms offered, let them stay out until their anger ceases and their reason returns.

If they are not willing to concede the guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment, and to give that pledge to the country of their future loyalty and their common sense of justice, they shall find that we can be as resolute as they, and we shall insist on the right as stubbornly as they persist in the wrong." These were not merely the declamations of statesmen, or of the press, or of the popular speakers of the Republican party.

They came spontaneously, as if by inspiration, from the mass of the people, and were based on that instinctive sense of justice which the multitude rarely fails to exhibit.
It was naturally inferred and was subsequently proved, that the Southern States would not have dared to take this hostile attitude except with the encouragement and the unqualified support of the President.

He was undoubtedly in correspondence, directly and indirectly, with the political powers that were controlling the action of the insurrectionary States, and he was determined that the policy of Congress should not have the triumph that would be implied in a ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment by those States.

Telegraphic correspondence clearly establishing the President's position, subsequently came to light.