<Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> <P> 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; the date is now commemorated as the holiday Juneteenth, recognizing the official emancipation of slaves in the state . For the next nine years, Texas was governed by a series of provisional governors as the state went through Reconstruction . Texas fully rejoined the United States in 1901, with a new state constitution approved in 1903 . </P> <P> 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 . In 1876, the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas opened, and seven years later the University of Texas at Austin began conducting classes . New land use policies drafted during the administration of Governor John Ireland enabled individuals to accumulate land, leading to the formation of large cattle ranches . Many ranchers ran barbed wire around public lands, to protect their access to water and free grazing . This caused several range wars . Governor Lawrence Sullivan Ross guided the Texan legislature to reform the land use policies . </P> <P> The state continued to deal with the issues of racism, with hundreds of acts of violence against blacks as whites tried to establish white supremacy . Ross had to personally intervene to resolve the Jaybird - Woodpecker War . </P>

____ opened its doors in 1876 as the first publicly supported college in texas