Shortly after the capture of New Orleans and the establishment of Federal authority over Louisiana, two of the Congressional districts of that State elected representatives to Congress. The admission or non-admission of these representatives involved the question of the political condition of the Southern States and people in the Federal Union, and the whole principle, in fact, of restoration and reconstruction. The subject was long and deliberately considered and fully discussed in Congress. The committee on elections reported in favor of their admission, and Mr. Dawes of Massachusetts, the chairman, stated that "more than ordinary importance is attached to the consideration of this subject. It is not simply whether two gentlemen shall be permitted to occupy seats in this House. The question whether they shall be admitted involves the principles touching the present state of the country to which the attention of the House has more than once been called." He said, "The question now comes up, whether any reason exists that requires any departure from the rules and principles which have been adopted." "An adherence to these principles is vitally important in settling the question, how there is to be a restoration of this Union when this war shall be drawn to a close." The subject of admitting these representatives and the principles of a restoration of the Union which their admission involved, was debated with earnestness for several days, and finally decided, on the 17th of February, in favor of admitting them, by a vote of ninety-two in the affirmative to forty-four in the negative. An analysis of this vote, in view of the proceedings, acts, and votes of many of the same members a few years subsequently, after Mr. Lincoln's death, presents some curious and interesting facts. It was not a strictly party vote. Among those who then favored the Administration policy of restoration were Colfax, Dawes, Delano, Fenton, Fisher of Delaware, Wm, Kellogg, J. S. Morrill of Vermont, Governor A. H. Rice of Massachusetts, Shellabarger, and others who opposed the restoration policy of President Lincoln after his death and the accession of President Johnson. In the negative with Thaddeus Stevens were Ashley, Bingham, the two Conklings, Kelley, McPherson, and a few others. But when reconstruction or exclusion actually took place after the termination of the war, great changes occurred among the members of Congress, and Stevens, the "Great Commoner," who in 1863 had a following of less than one-third of the representatives, rallied, four years later, more than two-thirds to his standard against restoration and for subjugation and exclusion.