The testimony taken by the Joint Committee on Reconstruction consisted of a series of interviews conducted after the Civil War to e 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 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 specifically about white southerners’ treatment of freedpeople and white Unionists as well as their attitudes toward the federal government.