The project

As the spring of 1866 merged into summer, intersectional politics drifted into stalemate. Fearing opposition within their section and reacting to, as well as taking advantage of, opposition from outside it, the Confederate leaders had succeeded in welding together a united South. In the North, the Republican party had also managed to consolidate itself. This had resulted from a two-pronged strategy, to prevent the possibility of readmitted Southern Congressmen allying with Northern Democrats and to shield the Republican Party from the President's vetoes which were aimed, it was feared, at its destruction. That the South or the Republicans might divide or be divisible was now highly unlikely. Therefore, the possibility of Southern readmission was more frightening to the Republicans and more remote for the South. Fears of what might result unless each of the protagonists, that is, the leaders of the South and their Republican counterparts, prepared to prevent such an outcome in fact helped to consolidate their opponents as well as themselves. Thus it was inconceivable, on the one hand, that the South would want to join any party but the Democratic and, on the other, that their opponents would let them join any but the Republican.

The irony of this situation was noticed by Jonathan Worth in a letter to Benjamin S. Hedrick: