The registrars listed Negro voters during the day, and at night worked at the organization of a radical Republican party.

The prospective voters were required to take the oath prescribed in the Reconstruction Act, but the registrars were empowered to go behind the oath and investigate the Confederate record of each applicant.

This authority was invoked to carry the disfranchisement of the whites far beyond the intention of the law in an attempt to destroy the leadership of the whites and to register enough Negroes to outvote them at the polls.

For this purpose the registration was continued until October 1, 1867, and an active campaign of education and organization carried on.
At the close of the registration, 703,000 black voters were on the rolls and 627,000 whites.

In Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina, Florida, and Mississippi there were black majorities, and in the other States the blacks and the radical whites together formed majorities.