The testimony taken by the Joint Committee on Reconstruction consists of a series of interviews conducted after the Civil War to determine the condition of society in the former Confederacy. The Joint Committee, formed by both Senate and House members of the Thirty-ninth Congress in December 1865, investigated reports of violence toward white Unionists and freed slaves in order to determine the extent of federal intervention needed in the South. Opposed to President Andrew Johnson’s policy of quick restoration of the southern states to their prewar status, also known as “Presidential Reconstruction,” the Joint Committee interviewed 144 people about their experiences in the postwar South, asking specifi cally about white southerners’ treatment of freedpeople and white Unionists as well as their attitudes toward the federal government. Upon the conclusion of its investigation, the committee issued a report summarizing its fi ndings on March 5, 1866, which included transcripts of witnesses’ testimony. The testimony largely supported the belief held by Johnson’s opponents, the Radical Republicans, that greater oversight was needed to ensure that freedpeople’s rights were protected and that the old power structures that had supported slavery and secession were not reestablished. The testimony gave Radical Republicans the proof they needed to wrest control away from Johnson and institute a set of policies known as “Radical Reconstruction,” which included a period of military governance, disfranchisement of white Confederates, the extension of the Freedmen’s Bureau, and the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.