As the opening of the Thirty-Ninth Congress approached, party leadership took the dramatic step of agreeing that neither house of Congress would admit representatives sent by the state governments established under Johnson’s policy. The goal was to stymie the process of restoring the rebel states and, in doing so, give Congress a chance to develop a reconstruction program of its own. Republican leaders also created a Joint Committee on Reconstruction to take testimony and draft policy. The committee, dominated by ideological moderates like William Pitt Fessenden but also including radicals
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