A conference of Southern governors met in Washington early in 1867 and drafted such an amendment.

But, it was too late.
Meanwhile the Fourteenth Amendment submitted by Congress had been brought before the Southern legislatures, and during the winter of 1866-67 it was rejected by all of them.

There was strong opposition to it because it disfranchised the leading whites, but perhaps the principal reason for its rejection was that the Southern people were not sure that still more severe conditions might not be imposed later.
While the President was "restoring" the states which had seceded and struggling with Congress, the Border States of the South, including Tennessee (which was admitted in 1866 by reason of its radical state government), were also in the throes of reconstruction.

Though there was less military interference in these than in the other states, many of the problems were similar.

All had the Freedmen's Bureau, the Negro race, the Unionists, and the Confederates; in every state, except Kentucky, Confederates were persecuted, the minority was in control, and "ring" rule was the order of the day; but in each state there were signs of the political revolution which a few years later was to put the radicals out of power.
The executive plan for the restoration of the Union, begun by Lincoln and adopted by Johnson, was, as we have seen, at first applied in all the states which had seceded.