But the sympathy which their condition under other circumstances might have evoked in the North, was stifled by the pertinent consideration that they had refused other forms of Reconstruction, and had wilfully drawn upon themselves all that was unwelcome in the one now about to be enforced.
It was to be noted moreover that the feature which was most unwelcome -- impartial suffrage--was the one especially founded upon justice, abstract as well as practical.
Conventions were held successively in all the States, the elections being conducted in good order, while every man entitled to vote was fully secured in his suffrage.

The conventions were duly assembled, constitutions formed, submitted in due time, and approved by popular vote.

State governments were promptly organized under these organic laws, Legislatures were elected, and the Fourteenth Amendment ratified in each of the States with as hearty a unanimity as in the preceding winter it has been rejected by the same communities.

The proceedings were approximately uniform in all the States, and the constitutions, with such minor differences and adaptations as circumstances required, were in all essential points the same.

All were ordained in the spirit of liberty, all prohibited the existence of any form of slavery, and all heartily recognized the supreme sovereignty of the National Government as having been indisputably established by the overthrow of the Rebellion which was undertaken to confirm the adverse theory of State-rights.
These proceedings in the South were in full progress when the second or long session of the Fortieth Congress began, on the first Monday of December, 1867.