Five months passed before the committee reported. During that interval Congress took no action determining the question at issue. A vast number of bills and resolutions was introduced proposing various modes of treatment for the southern states and various theories regarding their status, which are interesting to the historian, but all of which fell by the way. The Freedmen's Bureau Bill, if it had become law during this period, would have implied that in the opinion of Congress the late Confederate States were simply territory of the United States and not states in the Union.[57] But this bill failed to be repassed over the President's veto.[58] The Civil Rights Bill, which became law on April 9, 1866, made it a crime to discriminate against any person on account of his race or color under the alleged authority of any state law or custom, gave the federal judicial authorities power to arrest and punish any person guilty of this offense, and also gave the federal courts jurisdiction over any case before a state court in which such discrimination was attempted.[59] This law created entirely new relations between federal and state authority, but since it was passed as an act to enforce the Thirteenth Amendment,[60] and applied to all states alike, it committed Congress to no declaration regarding the status of the southern states. The joint committee made its long-expected report on April 30, 1866.[61] A great number of witnesses had been examined regarding conditions in the South, whose testimony fills a large volume and purports to be the basis of the committee's report. The committee thought that since the Johnson governments had been set up under the military authority of the President and were merely instruments through which he had exercised that power in governing conquered territory, they were not regular state governments. This belief was confirmed by the fact that the existing state constitutions had been framed by conventions acting under the constant direction of the President, and also by the fact that they had not been submitted to the people for adoption. The Johnson governments then were not state governments at all, and so could not send representatives to Congress. The committee appealed less to this constitutional argument than to arguments of policy. It was willing to grant the "profitless abstraction" that the southern states still remained states. The people of those states had waged war on the United States. Though subdued, they were defiant, disloyal, and abusive. They showed no disposition to abate their hatred for the Union or their affection for the Confederacy. To accord to such a people entire independence, taking no measures for security from future danger; to admit their representatives to Congress; to allow conquered enemies "to participate in making laws for their conquerors;" to turn over to the custody of recent enemies the treasury, the army, the whole administration--this would be madness unexampled.