This purified legislature now elected United States Senators, both of them Republicans, of course. All these things were done in the latter part of January and the early part of February of 1870, and as the Congress was in session, there was reason to expect that Georgia would be, at once, fully restored as a "State" of the Union. A bill was reported in the House of Representatives on the 25th of February from the Committee on Reconstruction for this purpose. It was nearly identical in its provisions and language with the Virginia and Mississippi bills, but it dragged along through nearly five months of debate and partisan wrangling before it became law. The reason of this delay was that, on March 4th, General Butler proposed an amendment to the bill which provided: "That the power granted by the constitution of Georgia to the general assembly to change the time of holding elections, and prescribe the {241} day of meeting of the general assembly, shall not be so exercised as to postpone the election of the next general assembly beyond the Tuesday after the first Monday in November in the year 1872, nor shall such power ever be by any future legislature so exercised as to extend the term of any office beyond the regular period named in said constitution; and the said general assembly shall by joint resolution consent to this condition before this Act shall take effect." This language was at once taken to mean that Congress would undertake to empower the legislature of Georgia to extend the terms of the members of the Georgia legislature and of the Governor, elected in April of 1868, by two years, on the ground that the "State" government of Georgia was still provisional, and would so remain until the passage of this Act, and that these terms would, therefore, not really begin until the passage of this Act. The conservative Republicans as well as the Democrats repudiated this interpretation of the powers of Congress to extend, or to authorize the "State" legislature to extend, the terms of the members of the legislature and of "State" officers as an unprecedented usurpation. Some of them repudiated the idea that there could be a provisional "State" government, and declared that any further legislation in regard to the reconstruction of Georgia was unnecessary, since the Act of June 25th, 1868, had restored Georgia to her position as a "State" of the Union, along with North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, Alabama, and Florida, upon certain conditions, all of which Georgia had fulfilled, just as the others had done, and since all the others had been admitted to the enjoyment of all of their rights and privileges as "States" of the Union without any further legislation than the Act of June 25th, 1868.