Texas moves to seize federal property

• In Austin, Texas, the Texas Secession Convention empowers a Committee of Public Safety to appoint commissioners, etc., to act, under certain circumstances, to take possession of federal property in the state. After seeing how the US military in an act of war seized Fort Sumter instead of withdrawing from South Carolina, other seceded states feel they must be proactive.The newly reconstituted Republic of Texas, like other seceded states, also adopts a Declaration of the Causes that have compelled them to secession.While the document’s complaints include a now offensive defense of slavery, there are other reasons.  

"By the disloyalty of the Northern States and their citizens and the imbecility of the Federal Government, infamous combinations of incendiaries and outlaws have been permitted in those States and the common territory of Kansas to trample upon the federal laws, to war upon the lives and property of Southern citizens in that territory, and finally, by violence and mob law, to usurp the possession of the same as exclusively the property of the Northern States. The Federal Government, while but partially under the control of these our unnatural and sectional enemies, has for years almost entirely failed to protect the lives and property of the people of Texas against the Indian savages on our border, and more recently against the murderous forays of banditti from the neighboring territory of Mexico; and when our State government has expended large amounts for such purpose, the Federal Government has refused reimbursement therefor[e], thus rendering our condition more insecure and harrassing than it was during the existence of the Republic of Texas. These and other wrongs we have patiently borne in the vain hope that a returning sense of justice and humanity would induce a different course of administration.”/1861