The bill was passed, under a suspension of the rules, by a vote of 111 to 40.[1]

The Reconstruction Acts, so-called—­that is, “An act to provide for the more efficient government of the rebel States,” of March 2d, 1867, and an act of the 23d of the same month, supplementary to the former—­were at once attacked, as may well be supposed, as invalid, unconstitutional, and arbitrary measures of the government; and various steps were taken at an early day to bring them to the test of judicial examination and arrest their enforcement.  Those acts divided the late insurgent States, except Tennessee, into five military districts, and placed them under military control to be exercised until constitutions, containing various provisions stated, were adopted and approved by Congress, and the States declared to be entitled to representation in that body.  In the month of April following the State of Georgia filed a bill in the Supreme Court, invoking the exercise of its original jurisdiction, against Stanton, Secretary of War, Grant, General of the Army, and Pope, Major-General, assigned to the command of the Third Military District, consisting of the States of Georgia, Florida, and Alabama; to restrain those officers from carrying into effect the provisions of those acts.  The bill set forth the existence of the State of Georgia as one of the States of the Union; the civil war in which she, with other States forming the Confederate States, had been engaged with the government of the United States; the surrender of the Confederate armies in 1865, and her submission afterwards to the Constitution and laws of the Union; the withdrawal of the military government from Georgia by the President as Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the United States; the re-organization of the civil government of the State under his direction and with his sanction; and that the government thus re-organized was in the full possession and enjoyment of all the rights and privileges, executive, legislative, and judicial, belonging to a State in the Union under the Constitution, with the exception of a representation in the Senate and House of Representatives.  The bill alleged that the acts were designed to overthrow and annul the existing government of the State, and to erect another and a different government in its place, unauthorized by the Constitution and in defiance of its guarantees; that the defendants, acting under orders of the President, were about to set in motion a portion of the army to take military possession of the State, subvert her government, and subject her people to military rule.  The presentation of this bill and the argument on the motion of the Attorney-General to dismiss it produced a good deal of hostile comment against the Judges, which did not end when the motion was granted.  It was held that the bill called for judgment upon a political question, which the Court had no jurisdiction to entertain.[2]