The rapid development of the radical policies during 1866 had convinced most Southerners that nothing short of a general humiliation and complete revolution in the South would satisfy the dominant party, and there were few who wished to be "parties to our own dishonor." The President advised the States not to accept the amendment, but several Southern leaders favored it, fearing that worse would come if they should reject it.

Only in the legislatures of Alabama and Florida was there any serious disposition to accept the amendment; and in the end all the unreconstructed States voted adversely during the fall and winter of 1866-67.

This unanimity of action was due in part to the belief that, even if the amendment were ratified, the Southern states would still be excluded, and in part to the general dislike of the proscriptive section which would disfranchise all Confederates of prominence and result in the breaking up of the state governments.
The example of unhappy Tennessee, which had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment and had been readmitted, was not one to encourage conservative people in the other Southern states.
The rejection of the amendment put the question of reconstruction squarely before Congress.

There was no longer a possibility of accomplishing the reconstruction of the Southern states by means of constitutional amendments.

Some of the Border and Northern states were already showing signs of uneasiness at the continued exclusion of the South.