As expected, President Andrew Johnson vetoed the amended Reconstruction Bill on this day, ten days after receiving it from the Congress.  Equally as expected, both chambers over-rode the White House rejection with a vote of 138 to 51 in the House of Representatives and 35 to 11 in the U.S. Senate.  The measure, which imposed military rule on the former Confederate states until they instituted the reforms the Congress deemed as needed for normal and full representation on the national stage, thus became law.  Other Reconstruction Acts would follow during 1867 under the Fortieth Congress (By John Osborne) 

With developments in the South increasingly frustrating Republicans, the Thirty-Ninth Congress moved in its "lame duck" session to pass a sweeping bill that imposed military rule on the former Confederate states until they instituted the reforms the Congress deemed as needed for normal and full representation on the national stage.  The bill passed the House on February 13, 1867. The U.S. Senate passed its version on a vote of 29 to 10, and included a change the House had earlier rejected from James Blaine of Maine that a simple ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment would significantly aid a state's acceptance. On this day, the House accepted the changes and the bill went to the White House where President Johnson exercised his veto on March 2, 1867. This action was over-ridden in both chambers on the same day and the bill became law.  (By John Osborne) 

With developments in the South increasingly frustrating Republicans, the Thirty-Ninth Congress moved in its "lame duck" session to pass a sweeping bill that imposed military rule on the former Confederate states until they instituted the reforms the Congress deemed as needed for normal and full representation on the national stage.  The bill passed the House on February 13, 1867. The U.S. Senate passed its version on a vote of 29 to 10, and included a change the House had earlier rejected from James Blaine of Maine that a simple ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment would significantly aid a state's acceptance. The House accepted the changes and the bill went to the White House where President Johnson exercised his veto on March 2, 1867. This action was over-ridden in both chambers on the same day and the bill became law.  (By John Osborne) 

With developments in the South increasingly frustrating Republicans, the Thirty-Ninth Congress moved in its "lame duck" session to pass a sweeping bill that imposed military rule on the former Confederate states until they instituted the reforms the Congress deemed as needed for normal and full representation on the national stage. The Reconstruction Act of 1867 had been formulated in the Joint Committee on Reconstruction of the Thirty-Ninth Congress and reported as a bill on February 3, 1867. The bill passed the House on this day by a vote of 109 to 55, with another twenty-four members not voting. The U.S. Senate passed an amended version three days later.  President Johnson vetoed the bill on March 2, 1867 but this was over-ridden in both chambers on the same day and it became law.  (By John Osborne) 

With developments in the South increasingly frustrating Republicans, the Thirty-Ninth Congress moved in its "lame duck" session to pass a sweeping bill that imposed military rule on the former Confederate states until they instituted the reforms the Congress deemed as needed for normal and full representation on the national stage. The Reconstruction Act of 1867 had been formulated in the Joint Committee on Reconstruction of the Thirty-Ninth Congress and reported as a bill on February 3, 1867. The bill passed the House on February 13, 1867 and the U.S. Senate a week later.  President Johnson vetoed the bill on March 2, 1867 but this was over-ridden in both chambers on the same day and it became law.  (By John Osborne) 

Despite floods and the effect of the Civil War on labor and land, the official tally of cotton production in the United States as of the close of the year had grown to over two and a half million bales, each bale measured at 400 pounds.  The corresponding fugure for 1866 stood at around 875,000 bales. Recovery was evident but the cotton industry would not reach the four million bales of 1860 for some time.  The current 2016 level of cotton produced exceeds sixteen million 480 pound bales. (By John Osborne)

Cornelius Springer Hamilton was a lawyer and farmer in Marysville, serving his first term in the Fortieth Congress from the Eighth District of Ohio.  Called home over family concerns about his suddenly unbalanced eighteen-year-old son, he was in the process of getting his son admitted to an asylum when the young man struck down his father with a wooden board, killing him instantly.  The killer than attempted to murder the rest of his family but was apprehended before further damage could be done.  Cornelius Hamilton was forty-six years old. He was replaced in a special election by Republican John Beatty. (By John Osborne)

John Potts Slough was a Cincinnati lawyer who had opened a practice in Denver, Colorado before rising to the rank of Brevet Brigadier-General in the Union Army during the Civil War. A Democrat, President Johnson had named him as Chief Justice of the New Mexico Territory following his discharge in 1865.  Notorious for his temper and obcenity-laced tirades - he had been expelled from the Ohio Legislature before the war for fighting - he swiftly made enemies in the still divided and notoriously violent territory.  He insulted a New Mexico legislator named William Logan Ryerson who responded two days earlier by shooting and fatally wounding Slough in the lobby of the Exchange Hotel in Santa Fe. Ryerson was lated tried for murder but found to have acted in self defense.  (By John Osborne)

John Potts Slough was a Cincinnati lawyer who had opened a practice in Denver, Colorado before rising to the rank of Brevet Brigadier-General in the Union Army during the Civil War. A Democrat, President Johnson had named him as Chief Justice of the New Mexico Territory following his discharge in 1865.  Notorious for his temper and obcenity-laced tirades - he had been expelled from the Ohio Legislature before the war for fighting - he swiftly made enemies in the still divided and notoriously violent territory.  He insulted a New Mexico legislator named William Logan Ryerson who responded by shooting and fatally wounding Slough in the lobby of the Exchange Hotel in Santa Fe.  Slough died two days later.  Ryerson was lated tried for murder but found to have acted in self defense.  (By John Osborne)