The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 2, July 1898 - April, 1899 Page: 152

152 Texas Historical Association Quarterly.

ENDURING LAWS OF THTE REPUBLIC OF TEXAS. II.1
C. W. RAINES.
[In the .preparation of this paper I have consulted the Journal of the
Consultation, 1835, the Journal of the Convention, 1836, the Journals and
Laws of the Congresses mentioned, and the archives in the Department of
State, Austin.-C. W. R.]
The law for the present location of the seat of government in
Texas is the first subject of the present paper; but before setting it
out in full I shall enumerate, as a matter of interest, all the pre-
ceding capitals of American Texas with the circumstances which
led to their selection as such.
Of the three departments into which Texas under the Mexican
regime was divided, Bexar was practically all Mexican in race and
sentiment; Nacogdoches had a large Mexican leaven; but Brazos
was heart and head American. It was this department embracing
Austin's colony that threw down the gauntlet of defiance to the
usurping Santa Anna in 1835 and called for a consultation of all
Texas at San Felipe de Austin.
The Brazos influence easily dominated the consultation, as Bexar
failed to have any delegates therein, and it abolished the depart-
mental system, making Texas a central republic, 'one and indivisi-
ble. Santa Anna was denounced for warring against the constitu-
tion of 1824, and a provisional government was established for
Texas at large and San Felipe de, Austin, the capital of Austin's
colony, and the capital of the department of Brazos as well, became
de facto et de jure the first capital of American Texas.
In despair of the Federal system in Mexico, the people of Texas
through their representatives met in 1836, on the call of the pro-
visional government, in Washington on the Brazos. Not a consul-
tation was, this, but a convention or constituent assembly in which
all the powers of sovereignty were claimed and exercised in the
declaration of independence and the formation of a constitution
and the inauguration of a full corps of executive officers. After a

1 See THE QUARTERLY for October, 1897.