ture and a Governor, through whom they might call upon the
Federal Government for protection against domestic violence,
according to the express guaranty of the Constitution. "To deny
this proposition," continued Mr. Bingham, "is to say that when the
majority in any State revolt against the laws, the State government
can never be re-organized nor the rights of the minority protected
so long as the majority are in revolt." He contended that the
doctrine he advocated was not a new one, that it was as old as the
Constitution, and he called attention to the remarkable letter of
"The Federalist," addressed by Mr. Madison to the American people
in which "he who is called the author of the Constitution" asked:
"Why may not illicit combinations for purposes of violence be formed
as well by a majority of a State as by a majority of a county or
district of the same State? And if the authority of the State
ought in the latter case to protect the local magistrate, ought
not the Federal authority in the former case to support the State
authority?"

Mr. Segar, who represented the district including Fortress Monroe,
pleaded very earnestly against the dismemberment of his State and
he argued, as Mr. Powell had argued in the Senate, that there was
no evidence that a majority of the people within the counties which
were to compose the new State had ever given their assent to its
formation. The ordinary vote of those counties he said was 48,000
while on the new State question the entire vote cast was only
19,000. He named ten counties included in the new State organization
in which not a single vote had been cast on either side of the
question at the special election. Though loyal to the Union and
grieving over the rebellious course of Virginia he begged that this
humiliation might be spared her. "Let there not be two Virginias;
let us remain one and united. Do not break up the rich cluster of
glorious memories and associations which gather over the name and
the history of this ancient and once glorious Commonwealth."

On the passage of the bill the ayes were 96 and the noes were 55.
The ayes were wholly from the Republican party, though several
prominent Republicans opposed the measure. Almost the entire
Massachusetts delegation voted in the negative, as did also Mr.
Roscoe Conkling, Mr. Conway of Kansas and Mr. Francis Thomas of
Maryland. The wide difference of opinion concerning this act was
not unnatural. But the cause o