In early February 1867, important political trends merged:  the continued dissatisfaction with President Johnson’s Reconstruction policy, the related failure of the former Confederate states (except for Tennessee) to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment, and the precedent for congressional oversight of suffrage in territories seeking statehood.  The result was the First Military Reconstruction Act by which Congress used the federal military and courts to police a new Reconstruction process in the South.  The measure mandated that black men be allowed to participate as voters and candidates for the state constitutional conventions, ex-Confederates be temporarily disfranchised, the new state constitutions enfranchise black men, and each former-Confederate state ratify the Fourteenth Amendment before it could regain representation in Congress.  The leading advocate of incorporating black enfranchisement into the Reconstruction Act was Congressman James Ashley of Ohio.  The bill was passed by large Republican majorities in the Senate on February 17 and in the House three days later.  It became law on March 2, 1867, when Republican majorities and one Democrat, Senator Reverdy Johnson of Maryland, voted to override President Andrew Johnson’s veto.  A cartoon by Thomas Nast in the April 13, 1867 issue of Harper’s Weekly contrasted the reaction of a newly enfranchised black man and disfranchised ex-Confederate to the Military Reconstruction Act.