After numerous propositions to amend, and speeches against the bill by Messrs. Hendricks, Cowan, Buckalew and McDougall, the Senate reached a vote upon the bill at six o'clock on Sunday morning. Twenty-nine voted in the affirmative, namely:
Messrs. Anthony, Brown, Cattell, Chandler, Conness, Cragin,
Creswell, Fogg, Frelinghuysen, Grimes, Howard, Howe,
Kirkwood, Lane, Morgan, Morrill, Poland, Pomeroy, Ramsey,
Ross, Sherman, Stewart, Trumbull, Van Winkle, Wade, Willey,
Williams, Wilson, and Yates.
Ten voted in the negative, to-wit:
Messrs. Buckalew, Cowan, Davis, Doolittle, Hendricks,
McDougall, Nesmith, Norton, Patterson, and Saulsbury.
The Senate amended the title of the bill by substituting the word "rebel" for "insurrectionary." Thus passed in the Senate the great measure entitled "A bill to provide for the more efficient government of the rebel States."
On Monday, February 18th, the bill, as amended, came before the House. Mr. Stevens moved that the amendments of the Senate be non-concurred in, and that the House ask a Committee of Conference.
Mr. Boutwell opposed the amendment. "If I did not believe," said he, "that this bill, in the form in which it now comes to us from the Senate, was fraught with great and permanent danger to the country, I would not attempt to resist further its passage."
He objected to the bill on the ground that it proposed to reconstruct the rebel State governments at once, through the agency of disloyal men, and that it gave additional power to the President when he had failed to use the vast power which he already possessed in behalf of loyalty and justice.
Mr. Stokes saw in the bill the principle of universal amnesty and universal suffrage. "I would rather have nothing," said he, "if these governments are reconstructed in a way that will place the rebels over Union men."
"Now, what has the Senate done?" Mr. Stevens asked. "Sent back to us an amendment which contains every thing else but protection. It has sent us back a bill which raises the whole question in dispute as to the best mode of reconstructing these States by distant and future pledges which this Congress has no authority to make and no power to execute. What power has this Congress to say to a future Congress, When the Southern States have done certain things, you shall admit them, and receive their members into this House?"