During January and February 1866, while the committee was at work in executive sessions, the House and Senate completed action on the First Supplemental Freedmen’s Bureau Bill. The act is important in tracing the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, for it explicitly defined the principal civil rights and immunities that were to be under constant discussion in the Congress for the next several months. This law guaranteed to the newly freed Negroes in the Southern States “the right to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence; to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold and convey real and personal property; and to have full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and estate.” The Freedmen’s Bill applied, by its own terms, only to the late Confederacy. Simultaneously, a legislative effort was launched to secure these same civil rights in the country as a whole. On February 2, after bitter debate on its constitutionality, what was to become the Civil Rights Act of 1866 passed the Senate. It went to the House, and in early March was favorably reported by the Judiciary Committee. During floor debate on March 13, Congressman Wilson of Iowa, chairman of the committee in charge of the bill, addressed himself to the bill’s opening provision, declaring that “there shall be no discrimination in the civil rights or immunities among the inhabitants of any State or Territory of the United States on account of race, color, or previous condition of slavery.” This part of the bill, Wilson said, “will probably excite more opposition than any other.” He undertook to allay apprehensions: What do these terms mean? Do they mean that in all things civil, social, political, all citizens, without distinction of race or color, shall be equal? By no means can they be so construed.... _Nor do they mean that ... their children shall attend the same schools. These are not civil rights or immunities._ [Emphasis added.] The Civil Rights Bill passed the House by 111-38 on March 13; it was vetoed on March 27, and passed over the veto on April 9. These dates are important. Late in February 1866, the Stevens Committee had brought into the House one draft of a proposed Fourteenth Amendment. It had been debated, and then sent back for more work. On April 21, a new draft came before the committee. On April 25, amendments were approved in committee that put the amendment in the form in which it finally was to become part of the Constitution. These changes wrote into Section 1 new prohibitions upon the powers of the States: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law.”