In the Senate the necessity of any bill and the propriety of the Bingham amendment were warmly debated for some weeks. Then the so-called Drake amendment was offered. It provided that whenever the legislature or governor of any state should inform the President of the existence within that state of associations organized for the purpose of obstructing the law and doing violence to persons, then the President should send troops to that state, declare martial law, suspend the privileges of the writ of _habeas corpus_, and take such other military measures as he saw fit, and should levy the cost of the expedition on the people of the state.[252] The propriety of grafting this general measure on a special bill like the present should not be discussed, it was said, in view of the pressing necessity of passing it in some way, no matter how.[253] The debate thus complicated continued until April 19, when the bill went to the committee of the whole. There, the night being far spent, two entirely new amendments were suddenly offered. One commanded Georgia to hold a general election in the present year; the other declared that the existing government of Georgia was still "provisional" and provided that the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 should continue to be enforced there. These amendments were adopted by the committee. The Drake amendment was also adopted. Finally, the entire bill as it came from the house was stricken out.[254] Thus transformed so that, as a Senator said, "it would not be recognized by the oldest inhabitant," the bill was passed by the Senate.[255] The House of Representatives did not take up the bill again until June 23. On June 24 it decided to insist on the passage of the bill substantially as before passed.[256] As a result of the conference following, the Senate yielded to the House. The bill became law on July 15, 1870. It said: ... It is hereby declared that the state of Georgia is entitled to representation in the Congress of the United States. But nothing in this act contained shall be construed to deprive the people of Georgia of the right to an election for members of the general assembly of said state, as provided for in the constitution thereof.[257] One would suppose that this act of July 15 should close the chapter; that it recognized Georgia as a state, and that henceforth all peculiar relations between Georgia and the federal government were at an end. The Georgia Radicals were able to avoid this conclusion. In a message to the legislature on July 18 the governor said that according to the act of March 2, 1867, the federal military power was to remain until the state was not only entitled to representation but actually represented in Congress. Section 5 of that act contained this language: