Henry McNeal Turner’s speech to the Georgia legislature in September 1868 was a direct response to the expulsion by that body of twenty-seven African American state legislators. In the first elections initiated by Radical Reconstruction in July 1867, three African Americans were elected to the Georgia Senate and twenty-nine to the Georgia House of Representatives. As in most southern states, Georgia Republicans were riven by factional disputes. Democrats, hoping to take advantage of Republican factionalism, sought to regain political power.