A Bill To enforce the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution and the laws of the United States, and to restore the …

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Read twice, recommitted to the Committee on Reconstruction, and ordered to be printed. Mr. B. F. Butler, on leave, introduced the following bill: A Bill To enforce the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution and the laws of the United States, and to restore the State of Georgia to the republican government elected under its new constitution. Whereas the legislature in the State of Georgia elected under its new constitution, preparatory to the restoration of that State to its proper place in the Union, and to the admission of senators and representatives in Congress therefrom, has, in violation of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States, refused to purge itself of members who by said amendment were prohibited from being such members, and from acting as such, and has permitted and continues to permit such members to act as such; and whereas a majority of the persons in fact composing said legislature has, in violation of said constitution, and of said constitution of Georgia, and in violation of the fundamental principles upon which Congress consented to the restoration aforesaid, expelled from said legislature a large number of its legally qualified members upon the sole ground that they were persons of African blood, and admitted thereto other persons not receiving a majority of the votes of the people; in their places; and whereas it appears that the local authorities in said State are wholly unable or unwilling to protect the lives, liberties, and property of lawful and unoffending citizens of said State from lawless violence, and refrain purposely, or from want of power, from bringing such offenders to justice, whereby it fully appears that the people of the State of Georgia have not complied with the terms, or conformed to the principles upon which its restoration was provided for, and that the government thereof is not in fact republican or regular: Therefore,

Recorded March 25, 1869, as the clerk wrote it