 The policies had infuriated the Radical Republicans in Congress and gradually alienated the moderates, who along with Democrats had been Johnson's base of congressional support, to the point that by 1866 the Congress had gathered enough antipathy towards the President to enact the first override of a Presidential veto in over twenty years, salvaging a bill that extended the life of the Freedmen's Bureau.Johnson also managed to alienate his own cabinet, three members of which resigned in disgust in 1866.Thus the elections that year were viewed as a referendum on Johnson himself, who had not been elected President but had acceded to power upon Lincoln's murder.