July 8, 1862, the House, after a brief debate, passed a bill reported by its Judiciary Committee directing the Secretaries of State and of War to report to the judges of the courts of the United States the names of all persons held as political prisoners, residing in the jurisdiction of said judges, and providing for their prompt release unless the grand jury should find indictments against them during the first term of court thereafter. The bill also authorized the President, during any recess of Congress, to suspend the privilege of the writ of _habeas corpus_ throughout the United States, or any part thereof, in cases of rebellion, or invasion, where the public safety might require it, until the meeting of Congress. Mr. Bingham, of Ohio, who reported the bill, explained that the committee did not attempt to decide whether the right to suspend the writ of _habeas corpus_ was vested in the executive or in the legislative branch of the Government. That was a matter of dispute, and the bill was intended to settle doubts, not theoretically but practically. If the right belonged to the Executive under the Constitution the passage of the bill would do no harm; if it belonged to Congress the bill would enable the President to exercise it legally. A motion to lay the bill on the table was negatived by a vote of 29 to 89, after which it was passed without a division. July 15, Trumbull reported this bill from the Judiciary Committee of the Senate with a recommendation that it pass. It was opposed vigorously by Wilson, of Massachusetts, who called it a general jail delivery for the benefit of traitors. He moved to strike out all of it except the section which authorized the President to suspend the privilege of the writ of _habeas corpus_. This motion was rejected by a majority of one, but the session came to an end on the following day without a final vote on the passage of the bill. In the meantime President Lincoln had seen fit to transfer the license of making arbitrary arrests from the Secretary of State to the Secretary of War. The change was no betterment, however, for, where Seward had previously chastised the suspected ones with whips, Stanton now chastised them with scorpions. Arbitrary arrests became more numerous and arbitrary than before. A special bureau was created for them under charge of an officer styled the Provost Marshal of the War Department.