On January 15, 1874, Democrat Richard Coke was inaugurated the fifteenth governor of Texas — with no lieutenant governor — after a tumultuous campaign and a ruling by the Texas Supreme Court invalidating Coke’s victory because of a misplaced semicolon in the state’s election law. Disregarding the ruling, Davis and state guards locked himself in his first-floor office as Coke and his supporters took possession of a second-floor room where he took the oath of office protected by the Travis Rifles, who had initially been sent to the Capitol to protect Davis. For two days, there were two governors. Davis resigned and left Austin, after President Ulysses S. Grant refused his request to send in federal troops to keep him in office. Coke served for two years until he became a U.S. senator. A former Confederate Army captain, Coke was credited with reestablishing white supremacist rule in Texas following Reconstruction and for returning Democratic control to Texas politics for the next century . . .