page_title: History of Texas (1865–99)
section_title: Land use issues
hierarchical_section_title: History of Texas (1865–99) / Land use issues
caption_attribution_description: English: Texas State Capitol Español: Capitolio de Texas
context_page_description: Following the defeat of the Confederate States in the American Civil War, Texas was mandated to rejoin the United States of America. Union Army soldiers officially occupied the state starting on June 19, 1865. For the next nine years, Texas was governed by a series of provisional governors as the state went through Reconstruction. As stated by the Texas State Library and Archive Commission, in 1869, the United States Congress passed an act allowing the citizens of Texas to vote on a new State Constitution. Later that same year, President Grant approved their Constitution. Texas fully rejoined the Union on March 30, 1870, when President Grant signed the act to readmit Texas to Congressional Representation. Texas later repealed the State Constitution of 1869 and enacted the Texas State Constitution of 1876 on February 15, 1876, which remains their current state constitution though with numerous amendments.
  Much of the politics of the remainder of the century centered on land use. Guided by the federal Morill Act, Texas sold public lands to gain funds to invest in higher education.
context_section_description: In the 1880s, Governor John Ireland reformulated the policy for selling public lands.  While "this policy at first increased the state's revenues...[it] eventually led to large accumulations of land in the form of cattle ranches."  The ranchers soon began running barbed wire around their own land and the public lands that they used, without permission, for grazing.  This practice often cut farmers and other ranchers off from water.  During a large drought in 1882, people began cutting the barbed wire, leading to violence between the ranchers and farmers.  Ireland called a special session of the legislature in 1884 to pass a law allowing the Texas Rangers to intervene in these disputes.  The Rangers were able to quell some, but not all, of the violence.
  Former Confederate general and Texas Ranger Lawrence Sullivan Ross became the 19th Texas governor in 1886. His campaign had focused on land use reform, as most of the frontier issues now resulted from disagreements over the use of public land, especially between farmers and ranchers concerned with water rights and grazing issues.  At Ross's urging the legislature passed laws to restore the power of the Land Office Commissioner, provide punishments for those using state lands illegally, and to catalog existing public lands.  In May 1888, Ross presided over the dedication of the new Texas State Capitol building.
  In March 1890, the U.S. Attorney General launched a suit in the Supreme Court against Texas to determine ownership of a disputed 1,500,000-acre (6,100 km²) plot of land in Greer County.  Determined to meet personally with the Attorney General, Ross and his wife traveled to Washington, D.C., where they visited President Benjamin Harrison at the White House.  Following that visit, they traveled to New York, where they met with former president Grover Cleveland.  While in New York, Ross was extremely popular with journalists.  He was interviewed by several large northeastern newspapers, which recounted in detail many of his exploits along the frontier.  According to his biographer Judith Brenner, the trip and the resulting exposure for Ross, "excited much interest in Texas among easterners, an interest that would eventually bear fruit in increased investment, tourism, and immigration".
caption: Lawrence Sullivan Ross presided over the dedication of the Texas State Capitol building.
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA", "Image Make": "OLYMPUS CORPORATION", "Image Model": "C8080WZ", "Image Software": "v757-76", "Image DateTime": "2006:11:22 15:24:53", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "458", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 50, 53, 48, 0, 0, 20, 0, 1, 0, 22, 0, ... ]", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/1000", "EXIF FNumber": "7/2", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Creative", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "50", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2006:11:22 15:24:53", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2006:11:22 15:24:53", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "-3/10", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "5/2", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "71/10", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3264", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2448", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Manual Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "0", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Landscape", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Hard", "EXIF Saturation": "Hard", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal"}