ack codes.
President Johnson, however vetoed these bills as well as the Fourteenth
Amendment. An enraged Congress passed the civil rights legislation over
his veto and came within one vote of impeaching the President. Although
impeachment failed, Johnson lost his leadership in the government, and
Congress, within two years after the end of the war, began Reconstruction
all over again. The first large-scale Congressional hearings in American
history were held to investigate the conditions in the South. The
investigation documented widespread poverty, physical brutality, and
intimidation as well as legal discrimination. The comittee made a
detailed examination of the race riots which had occurred in Memphis and
New Orleans in which scores of blacks had been killed. It concluded that
the New Orleans riot was in fact a police massacre in which dozens of
blacks were murdered in cold blood.

Congress removed home rule from the Southern states and divided the area
into five military districts. Even those Southerners who had already
received federal pardons were now required to swear a stricter oath in
order to regain their right to vote. State conventions met to draft new
constitutions. These conventions were dominated by a coalition of three
groups: new black voters, whites who had come from the North either to
make personal fortunes or to help educate the ex-slave, and Southern
whites who had never supported the Confederacy. The oath of allegiance
required a citizen to swear that he was now and always had been loyal to
the Federal Government. This excluded all the Confederate officials.
These new Southern reconstruction governments operated under the
protection of the Army and with the encouragement of the Federal
Government. They strove to reconstruct the South economically,
politically, and socially.

They established a system of public education, built many new hospitals,
founded institutions for the mentally and physically handicapped, and
attempted to reform the penal system. During Reconstruction blacks
played a significant political role throughout the South. Besides voting
in large numbers, they were elected to local, state, and federal offices.
Between 1869 and 1901, two became U. S. Senators and twenty were members
of the House of Representatives. Senators Revels and Bruce were elected
from Mississippi. P. B. S. Pinchback was elected to the Senate from
Louisiana, but he was not permitted to take his seat. H