The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 19, July 1915 - April, 1916 Page: 30
452 p. : maps ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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The Southwestern Historical Quarterly
effectual and legal. The law in this regard was considered by the
court to be as follows:
That acts necessary to peace and good order among citizens, such
for example, as acts sanctioning and protecting marriages and the
domestic relations, governing the course of descents, regulating
the conveyance and transfer of property, real and personal, and
providing remedies for injuries to person and estate, and other
similar acts, which would be valid if emanating from a lawful
government, must be regarded in general as valid when proceed-
ing from an actual, though unlawful government; and that acts
in furtherance or support of rebellion against the United States,
or intended to defeat the just rights of citizens, and other acts of
like nature, must, in general, be regarded as invalid and void.37
Having arrived at these conclusions, the court made short work
of the arguments of the defendants that the law creating the Mili-
tary Board was a legal measure for the legitimate defence of the
State, and that the contract with White and Chiles was a human-
itarian act. The law of the State was held to be outside the con-
stitutional rights of the States to take measures to defend them-
selves against foreign invasion and domestic violence. The court,
also, refused to sustain the contention that the contract was nego-
tiated with innocent purpose, and held throughout that it was
made in support of the cause of rebellion. It was, therefore, the
decision of the court that the title of the State of Texas had not
been divested by the contract entered into by the agents of the in-
surgent State government.
The contract being illegal, and White and Chiles being unlaw-
ful possessors of the bonds, it was held that no one could make
a valid purchase of them from these parties, if it was known
that these holders had no defensible title. The doctrine had been
laid down in the case of Murray v. Lardner" that a bona fide pur-
chase of bonds, in fair exchange, was a lawful transaction; and
In none of these cases is the attempt made to define exactly and pre-
cisely what constitutes a republican form of government. It would seem
that the earlier attitude was that, in some way, the representative element
must be maintained as essential to the form. If such was the conception
of republican government, it did not, at the time of the formation of the
Constitution, secure an expression in that instrument. The matter, per
force, is left to the decision of each generation, although that decision is
restricted by constitutional forms.
377 Wallace, 733.
82 Wallace, 118.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 19, July 1915 - April, 1916, periodical, 1916; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101067/m1/38/: accessed May 1, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.