The Republicans rested their defense on the necessity of an election law which would secure to every citizen entitled to vote a free exercise of his rights.[235] They turned the debate on the Democrats by declaring that if they could not carry an election without violence and were unwilling to pass a law to insure a fair election, they did not want an honest vote.[236] Radicals who were not satisfied with the bill declared that the opposition by their refusal to discuss it fairly and by filibustering had prevented any modification. The attitude of the mulatto leader, Pinchback, was that it was the lesser of two evils.[237] It reëmerged from a special committee, to which it had been committed, January 24,[238] and which again submitted a majority and minority report, for a second period of debate from January 27 to 31, on which latter date, much amended and fought to the bitter end, it was adopted by a vote of 20 to 12.[239] It came before the House on February 4, where it was argued at length from February 11 to 16, in keen, searching debate. Members did not scruple to speak plainly: “This bill, as I believe it, and as I know it, makes the Republican party dominant; it makes the Governor,--not clearly, but tacitly--all power; it makes the many parishes of this State but fiefs of the Executive. It adds one more power to those he is already endowed with.”[240] Note the succinct condemnation of it as a party measure in the following query: “Why is the whole State outlawed in consequence of the misbehavior of portions of it? Outlawed, I say, for it provides for the outlawry of those who refuse to vote a Republican ticket.”[241] Party feeling ran as high as in the other House, and members found threatening documents on their desks, placed there, Republicans declared, by the Ku-Klux.[242] Finally, suffering much amendment here too, it was passed February 18 immediately after prayer, with a burst of party effort: with the reading of only thirteen sections,[243] the passage of the bill as a whole was moved and carried, the reading of more than fifty sections being thus suppressed, notwithstanding the protest of the Democrats at the unconstitutional manner in which it was passed.[244] February 19 the Senate concurred in the House amendments.[245] The other measures seem almost to have turned on the fate of the election law, for the opposition evidently exhausted its great effort on that bill. There was little heat over the other measures; little filibustering, few long speeches. Such few members as spoke seemed to do so to discharge a moral duty.[246] The registration bill passed the Senate, February 9[247] without amendment and the House entirely without debate on the last evening of the regular session.