The Reconstruction bill was presented from the Committee of fifteen on Reconstruction to the House of Representatives on the 6th of February by Mr. Stevens. It was a thoroughly drastic measure. Instead of creating Territorial civil government in the usual manner, with an electorate designated by Congress, and with powers under the control of Congress, and sustained, if necessary, by the military of the United States, which would have been amply sufficient to meet all the real or proper exigencies of the case, the bill began by declaring that the pretended "State" governments of the so-called Confederate States did not protect adequately life or property, but countenanced and encouraged lawlessness and crime; and that it was necessary that peace and good order should be enforced in the so-called Confederate States until loyal "State" governments could be legally established therein; and then went on to enact that the said so-called Confederate States should be divided into five military divisions and made subject to the military authority of the United States, Virginia to constitute the first division, North Carolina and South Carolina the second, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida the third, Mississippi and Arkansas the fourth, and Louisiana and Texas the fifth; that the General of the army should assign an army officer of not less rank than a brigadier-general to the command of each of these divisions, and detail sufficient military forces, and place them under the command of each of said generals, to enable him to enforce his authority in the district over which he should be placed; that these commanders might use civil tribunals in the enforcement of the laws if they should see fit, but that, if these were not effective they might institute and govern through military commissions; that no sentence of these commissions should be executed until approved {113} by the commanding officer of the district; and finally, that the United States courts and judges should issue no writs of Habeas Corpus against the proceedings and judgments of these commissions. [Sidenote: The bill indefensible from the constitutional point of view.]