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The Texas Declaration of Independence
(March 2, 1836)
The Texas Declaration of Independence was produced,
literally, overnight. Its urgency was paramount, because while it was being
prepared, the Alamo in San Antonio was under siege by Santa Anna's army of
Mexico.
Immediately upon the assemblage of the Convention
of 1836 on March 1, a committee of five of its delegates were appointed to
draft the document. The committee, consisting of George C. Childress, Edward
Conrad, James Gaines, Bailey Hardeman, and Collin McKinney, prepared the
declaration in record time. It was briefly reviewed, then adopted by the
delegates of the convention the following day.
As seen from the transcription below, the document parallels somewhat that of
the United States, signed almost sixty years earlier. It contains statements on
the function and responsibility of government, followed by a list of grievances.
Finally, it concludes by declaring Texas a free and independent republic.
The full text of the document is as follows:
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The Unanimous
Declaration of Independence
made by the
Delegates of the People of Texas
in General Convention
at the town of Washington
on the 2nd day of March 1836. |
When a government has ceased to protect the lives, liberty
and property of the people, from whom its legitimate powers are derived, and for
the advancement of whose happiness it was instituted, and so far from being a
guarantee for the enjoyment of those inestimable and inalienable rights, becomes
an instrument in the hands of evil rulers for their oppression.
When the Federal Republican Constitution of their country, which they have
sworn to support, no longer has a substantial existence, and the whole nature of
their government has been forcibly changed, without their consent, from a
restricted federative republic, composed of sovereign states, to a consolidated
central military despotism, in which every interest is disregarded but that of
the army and the priesthood, both the eternal enemies of civil liberty, the
everready minions of power, and the usual instruments of tyrants.
When, long after the spirit of the constitution has departed, moderation is
at length so far lost by those in power, that even the semblance of freedom is
removed, and the forms themselves of the constitution discontinued, and so far
from their petitions and remonstrances being regarded, the agents who bear them
are thrown into dungeons, and mercenary armies sent forth to force a new
government upon them at the point of the bayonet.
When, in consequence of such acts of malfeasance and abdication on the part
of the government, anarchy prevails, and civil society is dissolved into its
original elements. In such a crisis, the first law of nature, the right of
self-preservation, the inherent and inalienable rights of the people to appeal
to first principles, and take their political affairs into their own hands in
extreme cases, enjoins it as a right towards themselves, and a sacred obligation
to their posterity, to abolish such government, and create another in its stead,
calculated to rescue them from impending dangers, and to secure their future
welfare and happiness.
Nations, as well as individuals, are amenable for their acts to the public
opinion of mankind. A statement of a part of our grievances is therefore
submitted to an impartial world, in justification of the hazardous but
unavoidable step now taken, of severing our political connection with the
Mexican people, and assuming an independent attitude among the nations of the
earth.
The Mexican government, by its colonization laws, invited and induced the
Anglo-American population of Texas to colonize its wilderness under the pledged
faith of a written constitution, that they should continue to enjoy that
constitutional liberty and republican government to which they had been
habituated in the land of their birth, the United States of America.
In this expectation they have been cruelly disappointed, inasmuch as the
Mexican nation has acquiesced in the late changes made in the government by
General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, who having overturned the constitution of
his country, now offers us the cruel alternative, either to abandon our homes,
acquired by so many privations, or submit to the most intolerable of all
tyranny, the combined despotism of the sword and the priesthood.
It has sacrificed our welfare to the state of Coahuila, by which our
interests have been continually depressed through a jealous and partial course
of legislation, carried on at a far distant seat of government, by a hostile
majority, in an unknown tongue, and this too, notwithstanding we have petitioned
in the humblest terms for the establishment of a separate state government, and
have, in accordance with the provisions of the national constitution, presented
to the general Congress a republican constitution, which was, without just
cause, contemptuously rejected.
It incarcerated in a dungeon, for a long time, one of our citizens, for no
other cause but a zealous endeavor to procure the acceptance of our
constitution, and the establishment of a state government.
It has failed and refused to secure, on a firm basis, the right of trial by
jury, that palladium of civil liberty, and only safe guarantee for the life,
liberty, and property of the citizen.
It has failed to establish any public system of education, although possessed
of almost boundless resources, (the public domain,) and although it is an axiom
in political science, that unless a people are educated and enlightened, it is
idle to expect the continuance of civil liberty, or the capacity for self
government.
It has suffered the military commandants, stationed among us, to exercise
arbitrary acts of oppression and tyrrany, thus trampling upon the most sacred
rights of the citizens, and rendering the military superior to the civil power.
It has dissolved, by force of arms, the state Congress of Coahuila and Texas,
and obliged our representatives to fly for their lives from the seat of
government, thus depriving us of the fundamental political right of
representation.
It has demanded the surrender of a number of our citizens, and ordered
military detachments to seize and carry them into the Interior for trial, in
contempt of the civil authorities, and in defiance of the laws and the
constitution.
It has made piratical attacks upon our commerce, by commissioning foreign
desperadoes, and authorizing them to seize our vessels, and convey the property
of our citizens to far distant ports for confiscation.
It denies us the right of worshipping the Almighty according to the dictates
of our own conscience, by the support of a national religion, calculated to
promote the temporal interest of its human functionaries, rather than the glory
of the true and living God.
It has demanded us to deliver up our arms, which are essential to our
defiance,
the rightful property of freemen, and formidable only to tyrannical governments.
It has invaded our country both by sea and by land, with intent to lay waste
our territory, and drive us from our homes; and has now a large mercenary army
advancing, to carry on against us a war of extermination.
It has, through its emissaries, incited the merciless savage, with the
tomahawk and scalping knife, to massacre the inhabitants of our defenseless
frontiers.
It hath been, during the whole time of our connection with it, the
contemptible sport and victim of successive military revolutions, and hath
continually exhibited every characteristic of a weak, corrupt, and tyrranical
government.
These, and other grievances, were patiently borne by the people of Texas,
untill they reached that point at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue. We
then took up arms in defence of the national constitution. We appealed to our
Mexican brethren for assistance. Our appeal has been made in vain. Though months
have elapsed, no sympathetic response has yet been heard from the Interior. We
are, therefore, forced to the melancholy conclusion, that the Mexican people
have acquiesced in the destruction of their liberty, and the substitution
therfor of a military government; that they are unfit to be free, and incapable
of self government.
The necessity of self-preservation, therefore, now decrees our eternal
political separation.
We, therefore, the delegates with plenary powers of the people of Texas, in
solemn convention assembled, appealing to a candid world for the necessities of
our condition, do hereby resolve and declare, that our political connection with
the Mexican nation has forever ended, and that the people of Texas do now
constitute a free, Sovereign, and independent republic, and are fully invested
with all the rights and attributes which properly belong to independent nations;
and, conscious of the rectitude of our intentions, we fearlessly and confidently
commit the issue to the decision of the Supreme arbiter of the destinies of
nations.
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Richard Ellis, President
of the Convention and Delegate
from Red River.
Charles
B. Stewart
Tho. Barnett
John S. D. Byrom
Francis Ruis
J. Antonio
Navarro
Jesse B. Badgett
Wm D. Lacy
William Menifee
Jn. Fisher
Matthew Caldwell
William Motley
Lorenzo de Zavala
Stephen H. Everett
George W. Smyth
Elijah Stapp
Claiborne West
Wm. B. Scates
M. B. Menard
A. B. Hardin
J. W. Burton
Thos. J. Gazley
R. M. Coleman
Sterling C.
Robertson
| James
Collinsworth
Edwin Waller
Asa Brigham
Geo. C. Childress
Bailey Hardeman
Rob. Potter
Thomas Jefferson
Rusk
Chas. S. Taylor
John S. Roberts
Robert Hamilton
Collin McKinney
Albert H. Latimer
James Power
Sam Houston
David Thomas
Edwd. Conrad
Martin Palmer
Edwin O. Legrand
Stephen W. Blount
Jms. Gaines
Wm. Clark, Jr.
Sydney O. Pennington
Wm. Carrol Crawford
Jno. Turner
Benj. Briggs Goodrich
G. W. Barnett
James G. Swisher
Jesse Grimes
S. Rhoads Fisher
John W. Moore
John W. Bower
Saml. A. Maverick (from Bejar)
Sam P. Carson
A. Briscoe
J. B. Woods
H. S. Kimble, Secretary
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