In December 1865 the campaign for the readmission of Southern delegates to Congress suffered a major setback. Congress refused to seat the Congressmen who had been selected under the auspices of the Provisional Governments. For a short while, Southerners were dismayed and disappointed. But very little time elapsed before reports came South which, to a large degree, laid their fears to rest. In the New Year, Washington correspondents from Southern newspapers, sympathetic Northern politicians and official lobbyists from various Southern politicians currently in the Federal capital provided the reassuring news that the President and his supporters had not been overwhelmed or cowed into submission but were simply biding their time until a favorable moment presented itself when a clear break with the Republican radicals could be made.

A typical analysis was offered by John. H. Wheeler, a lobbyist for North Carolina, when he suggested that ‘The heavy patronage of the President (and to be yet larger, by the Freedmen's bill) doubtless holds them [the radicals] in restraint, but, like two trains at full speed, in opposite directions on the same railway, the collision is only a question of time.’ Even before these informed assessments were received from men close to developments in Washington, the newspapers were stating as a matter of indisputable fact the eventuality of a contest with Congress.