The reason for this recommendation, said the committee's report, was that Georgia had failed to comply with the requirements of the Omnibus Act, and so was not yet entitled to representation in Congress. The failure here referred to was not that alleged by Bullock--that the members of the legislature had not taken the Test Oath--but the failure of the two houses to exclude persons disqualified by the Fourteenth Amendment. The Omnibus Act had provided that Georgia should be entitled to representation in Congress when her legislature had "_duly_" ratified the Fourteenth Amendment. The word _duly_ meant _in a certain manner_--namely, the manner required by the rest of the act. The failure to exclude the disqualified members was a departure from this manner. We saw in Chapter V. that each of the committees appointed by the Georgia legislature in July to investigate the eligibility of members was divided, that both houses voted that all were eligible in the face of detailed evidence to the contrary, that the decision of the lower house contradicted the majority of its committee, and that Meade accepted the decision rather for the sake of convenience and finality than because it was indisputably correct. On these facts and on some independent investigation the Senate judiciary committee based its belief that the legislature had failed to obey the Omnibus Act in this respect. Trumbull, of this committee, submitted a minority report. He admitted that the decision of the legislature may have been incorrect. But he protested that if the United States government intended to regard the presence of half a dozen ineligible members in a body of two hundred and nineteen as entirely vitiating the action of the legislature, it should have taken this stand at first. If at first it had, through its representative, Meade, overlooked the irregularity as a trifle, it seemed only just to continue to overlook it, and not to make it now the occasion for augmenting the turmoil in the state by fresh interference. But the majority rejoined that there were very good reasons for not overlooking the irregularity. It was not a mere trifling departure from the letter of the act of Congress, it was a violation of the spirit of that act. "The obvious design" of the Omnibus Act "was to prevent the new organization from falling under the control of enemies of the United States." The expulsion of the negroes showed that that design had been frustrated and that the government was under "rebel control;" it showed a "common purpose to ... resist the authority of the United States." Moreover, the "disorganized condition of society" in the state made it necessary for the federal government to intervene again in Georgia, not only to vindicate its law, but to preserve order. The protest of Trumbull is significant as an early sign of the growth within the Republican party of an opposition to the prolongation of Congressional interference with the southern state governments.