nd bills which were subsequently introduced.

While petitions of varying natures were presented by all of these
legislators, three classes, particularly, claimed the attention of
practically every one of them. These petitions sought the relief
either of an individual or of an institution suffering from some
misfortune of the war, made application for a pension, or requested
the adjustment of a claim. Of greater significance, however, were the
petitions which, while not so generally popular, led often to the
introduction of legislative measures. Conspicuous among these were
those seeking to remove the political disabilities of former
secessionists, those praying that undesirable laws or privileges be
abrogated, those advocating the passage of bills, those praying an
investigation of the political methods used in certain States, those
directing attention to conditions which merited legislative enactment,
those praying an appropriation by Congress for the construction of
public buildings, the promotion of public works, and the making of
local improvements, and those endorsing movements for the good of the
body politic.

One of the first problems of reconstruction that claimed the attention
of the Negro Congressmen arose from the measures proposing to grant
amnesty to the former Confederates who, by a provision of the
Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, had
been declared ineligible to vote and to hold office. In reference to
this matter, Jefferson F. Long, a representative from Georgia to the
Forty-first Congress, spoke in a manner reflecting the attitude of
many of the Negro Congressmen who were to follow him. His forceful
protest maintained that any modification of the test oath as then
administered, having the purpose to bring about a general removal of
political disabilities, would effect the subjugation of the loyal men
of the South to the disloyal. It would, moreover, appear to the Ku
Klux Klan to be an indorsement of their campaign of lawlessness,
depredation, and crime, fostered and abetted by the men whose
political disabilities it was then being sought to remove.[45]

Speaking on the enforcement act, on which he stated first his own
position and later that of the Republican Party in his State, Revels,
the Senator from Mississippi, said: "I am in favor of removing the
disabilities of those upon whom they are imposed in the South just as
fast as they give evidence of having become loyal