The salient features of the Reconstruction financial period of Texas history are the large growth of expenditures, the great increase in taxation, and the rapid accumulation of a comparatively heavy debt. The finances do not indicate the rule, however, of such venal and pillaging adventurers as infested other southern state with carpet-bag governments. At the same time there was more open abuse of public trust than at any other period of the state's history. An adjutant-general was guilty of defalcation of about $30,000;1 the funds of the treasury department were used for a time to abet private ends and its books fell into "reckless disorder;2 petty jobbery existed in supplying state institutions, and bribery was charged on high authority to have been instrumental in securing the subsidy to the International Railroad.

1 House Journal, 13th Leg., p. 34. 2House Journal, 13th Leg., p. 27.