It was quietly ratified April 16 and 17, 1868, and State officers chosen. H. C. Warmoth was elected governor and the mulatto, O. J. Dunn, lieutenant-governor. The military governor was removed and the governor-elect placed in power at once although his formal inauguration did not occur until July 13, 1868. The first legislature of the new régime, in which a sweeping radical victory against the unorganized, disheartened conservatives had seated a strong Republican majority, was in session from June 29 to October 20. The ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment by this body opened the door of re-admission to the Union so that by the act of June 25, 1868, Louisiana was once more empowered to send W. P. Kellogg and J. B. Harris to occupy the seats in the Senate vacated defiantly seven years before by John Slidell and J. P. Benjamin. By July 18, five Representatives had been seated in the House, including the first colored person to present himself for admission to Congress; and reconstruction would seem to be a matter of history.[15] But the military was not withdrawn, for Louisiana and Arkansas were created into the Department of Louisiana under General Rousseau. Troops were so stationed at different points throughout these States that they could be called upon to coöperate with the State authorities to preserve the peace and to sustain the new governments. The Presidential election of the fall of that year once more centered attention on the State by an undesired and wholly unexpected victory for Seymour and Blair, and still more by the disorders and outrages on the negroes.[16] Congress was not allowed to forget that it had a right to a directing influence in the matter through committees of investigation and decisions on disputed elections to its own body.[17] At the beginning of the year 1869 carpet-bag government was in full swing and the picture of the situation in the State is not a bright one.