From the beginning I have maintained these principles. Again and again I have expressed them in the Senate and elsewhere. At the last session I insisted upon the Louisiana Bill in preference to the Military Bill. In the earliest moments of the present session I introduced a bill of my own, prepared with the best care I could bestow, in which was embodied what seemed to me a proper and practical system of Reconstruction, with provisional governments to superintend the work and pave the way for permanent governments. This measure, which I now hold in my hand, is entitled “A Bill to guaranty a republican form of government in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas, and to provide for the restoration of these States to practical relations with the Union.” Its character is seen in its title. It is not a military bill, or a bill to authorize Reconstruction by military power; but it is a bill essentially civil from beginning to end. The principles on which this bill proceeds appear in its preamble, which, with the permission of the Senate, I will read. “Whereas in the years 1860 and 1861 the inhabitants of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas changed their respective constitutions so as to make them repugnant to the Constitution of the United States; “And whereas the inhabitants of these States made war upon the United States, and after many battles finally surrendered, under the rules and usages of war; “And whereas the inhabitants of these States, at the time of their surrender, were without legal State governments, and, as a rebel population, were without authority to form legal State governments, or to exercise any other political functions belonging to loyal citizens, and they must so continue until relieved of such disabilities by the law-making power of the United States; “And whereas it belongs to Congress, in the discharge of its duties under the Constitution, to secure to each of these States a republican form of government, and to provide for the restoration of each to practical relations with the Union; “And whereas, until these things are done, it is important that provisional governments should be established in these States, with legal power to protect good citizens in the enjoyment of their rights, and to watch over the formation of State governments, so that the same shall be truly loyal and republican: Therefore”----