Posse Comitatus Act. The Posse Comitatus Act is a United States federal law (18 U.S.C. Â§ 1385, original at 20 Stat. 152) signed on June 18, 1878 by President Rutherford B. Hayes. The purpose of the act â in concert with the Insurrection Act of 1807 â is to limit the powers of the federal government in using federal military personnel to enforce domestic policies within the United States.
The U.S. state of West Virginia has 55 counties. Fifty of them existed at the time of the Wheeling Convention in 1861, before which West Virginia was part of the state of Virginia.
The word county is used in 48 of the 50 states. While Louisiana uses the term parish and Alaska uses the word borough. Including those, there are 3,077 counties in the US, an average of 62 counties per state. The state with the fewest counties is Delaware (three), and the state with the most is Texas (254). In many states, counties are subdivided into townships or towns and may contain other independent, self-governing municipalities.