This bill, having been considered by the Committee, was adopted by them, and was reported by their chairman to the House, on the 6th of February, in the following form:

"Whereas, the pretended State Governments of the late so-called Confederate States of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Florida, Texas, and Arkansas were set up without the authority of Congress and without the sanction of the people; and whereas said pretended governments afford no adequate protection for life or property, but countenance and encourage lawlessness and crime; and whereas it is necessary that peace and good order should be enforced in said so-called States until loyal and Republican State Governments can be legally established: Therefore,

"Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That said so-called States shall be divided into military districts and made subject to the military authority of the United States, as hereinafter prescribed; and for that purpose* Virgina shall constitute the first district, North Carolina and South Carolina the second district, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida the third district, Mississippi and Arkansas the fourth district, and Louisiana and Texas the fifth district. "SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That it shall be the duty of the General of the army to assign to the command of each of said districts an officer of the regular army not below the rank of brigadier general, and to detail a sufficient force to enable such officer to perform his duties and enforce his authority within the district to which he is assigned.

"SEC. 3. And be it further enacted, That it shall be the duty of each officer assigned, as aforesaid, to protect all persons in their rights of person and property, to suppress insurrection, disorder, and violence, and to punish, or cause to be punished, all disturbers of the public peace and criminals; and to this end he may allow civil tribunals to take jurisdiction of and to try offenders, or when in his judgment it may be necessary for the trial of offenders he shall have power to organize military commissions or tribunals for that purpose, any thing in the constitution and laws of the so-called States to the contrary notwithstanding; and all legislative or judicial proceedings or processes to prevent the trial or proceedings of such tribunals, and all interference by said pretended State governments with the exercise of military authority under this act shall be void and of no effect.

"SEC. 4. And be it further enacted, That courts and judicial officers of the United States shall not issue writs of habeas corpus in behalf of persons in military custody unless some commissioned officer on duty in the district wherein the person is detained shall indorse upon said petition a statement certifying upon honor that he has knowledge or information as to the cause and circumstances of the alleged detention, and that he believes the same to be rightful; and further, that he believes that the indorsed petition is preferred in good faith and in furtherance of justice, and not to hinder or delay the punishment of crime. All persons put under military arrest, by virtue of this act, shall be tried without unnecessary delay, and no cruel or unusual punishment shall be inflicted.

"SEC. 5. And be it further enacted, That no sentence of any military commission or tribunal hereby authorized, affecting the life or liberty of any person, shall be executed until it is approved by the officer in command of the district; and the laws and regulations for the government of the army shall not be affected by this act, except in so far as they conflict with its provisions."

Mr. Stevens, having been remonstrated with by a Democratic member for expressing a wish to bring the question to vote without a prolonged debate, replied: "I am very willing that the debate which has been going on here for three weeks shall all be read over by the gentleman whenever he can take time to read it." "On behalf of the American people," said the same member, "I ask more time for debate." "I will see what the American people think of it in the morning. If they are generally for a prolongation of the debate, of course I will go with them. But I will wait until then, in order to ascertain what the people want."

On the following day, February 7th, Mr. Stevens introduced the discussion with a brief speech. "This bill provides," said he, that "the ten disorganized States shall be divided into five military districts, and that the commander of the army shall take charge of them through his lieutenants as governors, or you may call them commandants if you choose, not below the grade of brigadiers, who shall have the general supervision of the peace, quiet, and the protection of the people, loyal and disloyal, who reside within those precincts; and that to do so he may use, as the law of nations would authorize him to do, the legal tribunals whereever he may deem them competent; but they are to be considered of no validity per se, of no intrinsic force, no force in consequence of their origin, the question being wholly within the power of the conqueror, and to remain until that conqueror shall permanently supply their place with something else. I will say, in brief, that is the whole bill. It does not need much examination. One night's rest after its reading is enough to digest it."

"Of all the various plans," said Mr. Brandegee," which have been discussed in this hall for the past two years, to my mind it seems the plainest, the most appropriate, the freest from constitutional objection, and the best calculated to accomplish the master aims of reconstruction.

"It begins the work of reconstruction at the right end, and employs the right tools for its accomplishment. It begins at the

point where Grant left off the work, at Appomattox Court-house, and it holds those revolted communities in the grasp of war until the rebellion shall have laid down its spirit, as two years ago it formally laid down its arms."

Mr. LeBlond characterized the Committee on Reconstruction as "the maelstrom committee, which swallows up every thing that is good and gives out every thing that is evil."

"There is nothing left," said he, in the conclusion of his speech, "but quiet submission to your tyranny, or a resort to arms on the part of the American people to defend themselves.

"I do not desire war; but as one American citizen, I do prefer war to cowardly submission and total destruction of the fundamental principles of our Government. In my honest conviction, nothing but the strong arm of the American people, wielded upon the bloody battle-field, will ever restore civil liberty to the American people again."

"Is it possible," said Mr. Finck, "that in this Congress we can find men bold enough and bad enough to conspire against the right of trial by jury, the great privilege of habeas corpus; men who are willing to reverse the axiom that the military should be subordinate to the civil power, and to establish the abhorred doctrine resisted by the brave and free men of every age, that the military should be superior to the civil authority?"

"It does not seem to me," said Mr. Pike, "that the change proposed to be made by this bill in the management of the Southern States is so violent as gentlemen on the other side would have us suppose. They seem to believe that now the people of those States govern themselves; but the truth is, since the suppression of the rebellion, that is, since the surrender of the rebel armies in 1865, the government of those States have been virtually in the hands of the President of the United States.

"This bill does not transfer the government of those States from the people to the officers of the army, but only from the President to those officers."

Mr. Farnsworth, who next addressed the House, gave numerous authenticated instances of outrages and murders perpetrated by rebels upon Union soldiers and citizens. "It is no longer a question of doubt," said he, "it can not be denied that the loyal men, the Union soldiers and the freedmen in these disorganized and disloyal States are not proteeted. They are murdered with

impunity; they are despoiled of their goods and their property; they are banished, scattered, driven from the country."

Mr. Rogers denounced the pending bill in most emphatic language. "You will carry this conflict on," said he, "until you bring about a war that will shake this country as with the throes of an earthquake; a war that will cause the whole civilized world to witness our dreadful shock and fill nature with agony in all her parts, with which the one we have passed through is not at all to be compared."

He eulogized President Johnson in the highest terms. "Free government," said he, "brought him from a poor boy to as great a man as ever lived, and he deserves as much credit as Washington and will yet receive it. He will not submit to have the citadel of liberty invaded and destroyed without using the civil and military powers to prevent it. He will maintain the Constitution, sir, even to the spilling of blood."

Mr. Bingham proposed to amend the bill to make it accord with his theory by substituting the phrase "the said States" for the words "so-called States." He also proposed some limitation of the extent to which the habeas corpus should be suspended. "When these men," said he, "shall have fulfilled their obligations, and when the great people themselves shall have put, by their own rightful authority, into the fundamental law the sublime decree, the nation's will, that no State shall deny to any mortal man the equal protection of the laws-not of the laws of South Carolina alone, but of the laws national and State, and above all, sir, of the great law, the Constitution of our own country, which is the supreme law of the land, from Georgia to Oregon, and from Maine to Florida-then, sir, by assenting thereto those States may be restored at once. To that end, sir, I labor and for that I strive."

"Unless the population of these States," said Mr. Lawrence, "is to be left to the merciless rule of the rebels, who employ the color of authority they exercise under illegal but de facto State governments to oppress all who are loyal without furnishing them any protection against murder and all the wrongs that rebels can inflict on loyal men, we can not, dare not refuse to pass this bill." . Since, however, the bill did not propose any "plan of reorganizing State governments in the late rebel States," Mr. Lawrence read amendments which he desired to introduce at the proper