Page:Journal of Negro History, vol. 7.djvu/172

142 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.