Several bills relating to Georgia were then introduced, which, though they were not advanced very far, are worth noticing.[194] Their titles indicate the purpose "to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment." Now, the Fourteenth Amendment consists principally of prohibitions on states; it could not be enforced in Georgia unless Georgia was a state. Georgia had (it was assumed) admitted to her legislature men subject to the disqualifications of the Fourteenth Amendment, and had excluded men from the legislature on the ground of color, thus denying the equal protection of the laws to citizens. The latter act had been done after the Fourteenth Amendment went into effect (July 28, 1868[195]), the former before, but its effect continued. If Georgia was a state, then, she had violated the amendment, and Congress might correct these two acts by virtue of its power to enforce the amendment. If Georgia was not a state, she had not violated the Fourteenth Amendment, but her acts were subject to correction by Congress, because her government was "provisional only." If, therefore, Congress proposed to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment in Georgia, it acknowledged that Georgia was a state, and so debarred itself from any interference not necessary to enforce that Amendment. If it proposed to interfere simply as with a provisional government, there was no such limitation. The bills of the first session of the forty-first Congress proposed to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment. To secure the enforcement of the disqualification clause they provided that each member of the legislature should be required to take an oath saying that he was not disqualified by the amendment, and that those who did not so swear should be excluded. To secure equal rights to the colored legislators they provided that all persons elected to the legislature (according to General Meade's announcement of the result of the election of 1868) who should take the test oath required should be admitted, and that the expulsion of the negroes should be declared void. The federal military authority was to assist in executing these measures if requested by the governor. These measures, it will be observed, were only such as might legally be taken regarding Massachusetts if it violated the Fourteenth Amendment.