If they preferred, they might remain under military rule.

Either by design or by carelessness no machinery of administration was provided for the execution of the act.

When it became evident that the Southerners preferred military rule, the new Congress passed a Supplementary Reconstruction Act on the 23d of March designed to force the earlier act into operation.

The five commanding generals were directed to register the blacks of voting age and the whites who were not disfranchised, to hold elections for conventions, to call the conventions, to hold elections to ratify or reject the constitutions, and to forward the constitutions, if ratified, to the President for transmission to Congress.
In these reconstruction acts the whole doctrine of radicalism was put on the way to accomplishment.

Its spread had been rapid.