Congress was in trepidation as to the outcome of the case and was resolved to take no chances on it. Various legislative remedies were proposed. One was to require a unanimous vote of the Supreme Court to pronounce any act of Congress unconstitutional and void. A bill requiring a two-thirds vote of the court in such cases actually passed the House on the 13th of January by yeas 116, nays 39, but it was never considered by the Senate. The end was accomplished, however, in a different way. The Senate had passed a bill of only one section, reported by Williams, of Oregon, from the Committee on Finance, to amend the code of judicial procedure in revenue cases. The House attached to this bill another section repealing so much of the Act of February 5, 1867, as authorized an appeal to the Supreme Court in the class of cases therein named, and withdrawing from the Supreme Court jurisdiction as to appeals already taken. This bill passed the House March 13, 1868, without a division. It was taken up in the Senate on the motion of Senator Williams and passed by a vote of 32 to 6 the same day, although Senators Buckalew and Hendricks asked for an explanation of its meaning, which was not given to them. Although Buckalew and Hendricks did not have time to find out the nature of this bill, Andrew Johnson did. In due time he returned it to the Senate with a veto message, exposing it as a measure to deprive citizens of their rights under existing law and to arrest proceedings already in course of judicial determination. On this veto there was a debate in the Senate beginning on March 25, 1868, in which the Democrats, led by Hendricks, had decidedly the best of it. The supporters of the bill had very little to say for themselves. Trumbull contended that the bill did not affect any case then pending in the court, but in this debate he was worsted by Doolittle, who showed that it applied to the McCardle case. Trumbull and Carpenter had argued that the Supreme Court had no jurisdiction, since military cases were not appealable under the Act of February 5, 1867. The court had ruled against them because McCardle was arrested, not for a military, but for a civil offense. It still remained to be determined whether the court below had jurisdiction. Trumbull was confident that the Supreme Court would hold that the lower court had no such jurisdiction, in which case the appeal would fail and the bill vetoed by the President would be nugatory as to McCardle. Doolittle in reply showed that the bill did cut off McCardle's rights as an appellant, and the Supreme Court so held in the month of December following, when it dismissed the petition expressly on the ground that its jurisdiction had been withdrawn by the Act of March 27, 1868. The bill was passed over the veto on that date, by 33 to 9 in the Senate and by 115 to 34 in the House. It was partisan legislation. The Republicans drew a long breath after its passage because they had apprehended