until loyal and republican State governments could be legally established, Congress divided the States named into five military districts (Texas with Louisiana being the fifth), and made it the duty of the President to assign to each an officer of the army, and to detail a sufficient military force to enable him to perform his duties and enforce authority within his district. The act made it the duty of this officer to protect all persons in their rights, to suppress insurrection, disorder, violence, and to punish, or cause to be punished, all disturbers of the public peace and criminals, either through the local civil tribunals or through military commissions, which the act authorized. It provided, further, that when the people of any one of these States had formed a constitution in conformity with that of the United States, framed in a way which the statute went on to specify, and when the State had adopted a certain article of amendment named, to the Constitution of the United States, and when such article should have become a part of the Constitution of the United States, then that the States respectively should be declared entitled to representation in Congress, and the preceding part of the act become inoperative, and that, until they were so admitted, any civil governments which might exist in them should be deemed provisional only, and subject to the paramount authority of the United States, at any time to abolish, modify, control, or supersede them.A State convention of 1866 passed an ordinance looking to the recovery of these bonds, and, by act of October of that year, the governor of Texas was authorized to take such steps as he might deem best for the interests of the State in the matter, either to recover the bonds or to compromise with holders. Under this act, the governor appointed an agent of the State to look after the matter.It was in this state of things, with the State government organized in the manner and with the ...
