and the supporters continued to battle for black rights with some success. The public mood gradually turned against Johnson and his attempts to install governments in the South that were controlled by Confederate loyalists. The Republican-controlled Congress became increasingly resistant to Johnson's plans for a limited reconstruction of the southern states. The radical Republicans wanted to see sweeping changes enforced that would end the former slaveholders' power in the South. Thaddeus Stevens urged that the estates of the large slaveholders be broken up and the land distributed to ex-slaves, or freedmen, as they were then known. In the summer of 1866, Congress passed two bills over the president's veto. One, the Freedmen's Bureau Bill, extended the powers of a government agency that had been established in 1865 for the purpose of providing medical, educational, and financial assistance for the millions of impoverished southern blacks. Congress also passed the Civil Rights Bill, which gave full citzenship to blacks, along with all the rights enjoyed by other Americans. President Johnson's supporters, mainly Democrats and conservative Republicans, organized in the summer of 1866 to stop the movement for further black rights. The radical Republicans also held a meeting in Philadelphia to vote on a resolution calling for black suffrage, and Douglass attended the convention as a delegate from New York. Unfortunately, he encountered much prejudice from some Republican politicians, who were unwilling to associate with blacks on an equal level. Nonetheless, Douglass went to the convention and spoke out for black suffrage. The vote on the resolution was a close one, for some of the delegates were afraid that white voters would not support a party that allied itself too closely with blacks. Speeches by Douglass and the woman suffragist Anna E. Dickinson helped turn the tide in favor of black suffrage. For Douglass, the convention also held a ...
