The bill in its original form, as it came from the House, was purely, as indicated by its title, “a bill to provide for the more efficient government of the insurrectionary States,” dividing them into military districts and placing them under military rule,--this being deemed the only effectual means of suppressing the outrages continually perpetrated upon the loyalists of the South, black and white,--its Reconstruction features, which included the provision for colored suffrage, being engrafted upon it by the Senate, coupled with considerable modifications of its military details. It was on the votes at this stage, February 16th, that Mr. Sumner’s name was wanting. On the return of the bill to the House for concurrence in these amendments, it at once encountered on the Republican side severe animadversion, aptly expressed in the remark,--“We sent to the Senate a proposition to meet the necessities of the hour, which was Protection without Reconstruction, and it sends back another which is Reconstruction without Protection.” Concurrence was refused, and a committee of conference asked. The Senate insisting, and declining the proposed conference, the House proceeded alone, supplementing the Reconstruction provisions with others guarding against Rebel domination,[234] and crowning their work with the emphatic vote of 128 Yeas to 46 Nays. To this vote the Senate yielded, by a concurrent vote of Yeas 35, Nays 7,--with “the effect,” as announced, “of passing the bill.” Mr. Sumner, hailing these amendments as what he had required, of course voted with the Yeas,--and his name so stands on both of the official registers, in immediate conjunction with Mr. Trumbull’s.[235] This was on the 20th of February. The vote consequent upon the Veto was ten days later, when his name was again recorded with the Yeas.[236] These two were the only votes in the Senate on the Reconstruction Act of March 2, 1867, in the completeness of its provisions, as it appears in the Statute-Book.[237] * * * * * February 10th, 1870, the bill for the admission of Mississippi having come up for consideration in the Senate, Mr. Stewart, of Nevada, availed himself of the opportunity to reopen the personal controversy with Mr. Sumner, in an acrimonious speech denying his claim to the authorship of the provision for colored suffrage in the Reconstruction Act of 1867, and ascribing it to Mr. Bingham, of Ohio, a member of the other House,--quoting Mr. Sumner’s opening declaration on this point, but resisting the reading of what followed in explanation and support of that declaration, under the plea that “he did not want it printed as part of his own speech.”[238] On the conclusion of Mr. Stewart’s speech, Mr. Sumner answered as follows:--