Excerpt from A History of Military Government in Newly Acquired Territory of the United States The framers Of the Constitution probably thought that they had subordinated the military to the civil power in almost all cases, but a century has seen a remarkable growth in the scope of the former. It would be absurd to think of a civil power in hostile territory superior to the military power occupying the country; but upon the transfer of sovereignty the territory ceases to be hostile, unless a serious insurrection is raised, yet the military continues to admin ister affairs until Congress provides some form of govern ment. Even in territory acquired by treaties of purchase in times of peace the military, or at least the Executive pre rogative, which is generally based upon military authority, has played a more or less important part until such action by Congress. For that reason the governments of Louisiana and Florida in the transition stage have been included in this study, though there may be some doubt as to whether they were strictly military. At any rate they were so re= garded by some at the time, and perhaps they were more military than civil. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.