Governor of Texas
At the end of the war, President Andrew Johnson named Hamilton as the provisional civilian governor of the state, an office Hamilton held for 14 months during the early stages of Reconstruction. He was governor when the nation ratified the Thirteenth Amendment and granted economic freedom to the newly freed slaves, although Texas itself declined to ratify the amendment until 1870. Hamilton also faced problems such as Indian incursions, general lawlessness, and chaotic finances in the aftermath of the Civil War. When his plans at the Constitutional Convention of 1866 were not enacted, he rejected Johnson's plan for Reconstruction and aligned himself with the Radical Republicans. He spoke out in favor of black suffrage and in September 1866 organized the Southern Loyalists' Convention in Philadelphia, where he criticized President Johnson. He resigned in 1867 and went to work as a bankruptcy judge in New Orleans. Later that year he accepted a position as a justice on the Texas Supreme Court. Hamilton tried to regain the governorship in the election of 1869, but was defeated by Edmund J. Davis.
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