in every county and the result was fairly {225} representative of the people. There was lacking but one thing more for the complete restoration of the "State" to its federal relations, viz., the admission of the Senators and Representatives from it to seats in Congress. They presented themselves at the opening of the Congressional session on the first Monday of December following, and were excluded, along with the Senators and Representatives from the other "Johnson States," by the Stevens resolution. [Sidenote: The Vagrant Act.] [Sidenote: General Terry's order setting aside the Vagrant Act.] For more than a year, however, this government continued to act as the "State" government of Virginia, under the limitations placed upon it by the presence of the military of the United States, and the interference of the commanding general in behalf of the freedmen. On January 15th, 1866, the legislature chosen at the October elections of the preceding year passed the vagrant act, which defined as vagrants "all persons who, not having wherewith to maintain themselves and their families, live idly and without employment, and refuse to work for the usual and common wages given to the laborers in the like work in the place where they are," and which authorized the condemned vagrant to be hired out, and his wages applied to his own use or the use of his family, and, in case of his running away from the hirer, to be apprehended on the warrant of a justice and returned to the hirer, who should have one month of service extra, and without wages, for the interruption of the service contracted for, and other trouble and expense, and should also have the right, by permission of the justice, to work the returned vagrant with ball and chain, in order to prevent a repetition of his flight. On the 24th, just nine days after the passage of the act, General Terry, the military commander at Richmond, issued an order setting aside this measure as to the freedmen. He based his order on the {226} tendency of the statute to influence employers to combine for the purpose of lowering the wages of the freedmen to a point that would pauperize them and drive them into vagrancy, and create thus the very situation which, under the operation of the measure, would lead to a species of servitude worse than the old domestic slavery. He had no reliable facts of experience upon which to base his theory. It was a bit of political and economic prophecy on his part. It was sufficient, however, to call down maledictions from the Congress at Washington and the people of the North upon the legislature at Richmond and the people of Virginia and of the South generally. [Sidenote: Virginia made a Military District.]