the two authorities acted in cooperation. The army of occupation, too, exerted
an authority which not infrequently interfered with the workings of the new
state government. Nearly everywhere there was a lack of certainty and
efficiency due to the concurrent and sometimes conflicting jurisdictions of
state government, army commanders, Bureau authorities, and even the President
acting upon or through any of the others.

The standing of the Southern state organizations was in doubt after the
refusal of Congress to recognize them. Nevertheless, in spite of this
uncertainty they continued to function as states during the year of
controversy which followed; the courts were opened and steadily grew in
influence; here and there militia and patrols were reorganized; officials who
refused to "accept the situation" were dismissed; elections were held; the
legislatures revised the laws to fit new conditions and enacted new laws for
the emancipated blacks. To all this progress in reorganization, the action of
Congress was a severe blow, since it gave notice that none of the problems of
reconstruction were yet solved. An increasing spirit of irritation and
independence was observed throughout the states in question, and at the
elections the former Confederates gained more and more offices. The year was
marked in the South by the tendency toward the formation of parties, by the
development of the "Southern outrages" issue, by an attempt to frustrate
radical action, and finally by a lineup of the great mass of the whites in
opposition to the Fourteenth Amendment and other radical plans of Congress.

The Joint Committee on Reconstruction, appointed when Congress refused to
accept the work of President Johnson, proceeded during several months to take
testimony and to consider measures. The testimony, which was taken chiefly to
support opinions already formed, appeared to prove that the Negroes and the
Unionists were so badly treated that the Freedmen's Bureau and the army must
be kept in the South to protect them; that free Negro labor was a success but