Texas Almanac, 1968-1969 Page: 74
[706] p. : ill. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this book.
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74TEAAMAA-9816
Texas Declaration
The Declaration of Independence of the
Republic of Texas was adopted by the dele-
gates of the people of Texas in general con-
vention in the town of Washington-on-the-
Brazos, March 2, 1836. Richard Ellis, presi-
dent of the convention, appointed a commit-
tee of five to write a Declaration of Inde-
pendence for submission to the convention.
owever, there is much evidence that
George C. Chi]dress, one of the members,
wrote the document with little or no help
fro.n the other members. Childress is there-
fore generally accepted as the author of the
Texas Declaration of Independence.
Following is the text of the Texas Declar-
ation of Independence, copied word for word
from the original text and punctuated exact-
ly as in the original text. Following the text
of the declaration are the names of the
signers with their surnames and given names
written, abbreviated and punctuated, exact-
ly as on the original copy of the declaration:
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 inesti-
mable and inalienable rights, becomes an in-
strument 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 gov-
ernment 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, and the ever-
ready minions of power, and the usual in-
struments of tyrants; When, long after the
spirit of the constitution has departed, mod-
eration 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 re-
garded, 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 conse-
quence of such acts of malfeasance and ab-
dication, on the part of the government,
anarchy prevails, and civil society is dis-
solved into its original elements; In such a
crisis, the first law of nature, the right of
self-preservation-the inherent and inalien-
able right 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 im-
pending dangers, and to secure their future
welfare and happiness.
Nations, as well as individuals, are amen-
able for their acts to the public opinion of
mankind. A statement of a part of our griev-
ances 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 coloniza-
tion laws, invited and induced the Anglo-
American population of Texas to colonize its
wilderness under the pledged faith of a writ-
ten constitution, that they should continue to
enjoy that constitutional liberty and republi-
can government to which they- had been ha-
bituated in the land of their birth, the United
States of America. In this expectation theyof Independence
have been cruelly disappointed, inasmuch as
the Mexican nation has acquiesced in the
late changes made in the government by Gen-
eral Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, who, hav-
ing overturned the constitution of his coun-
try, 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 na-
tional 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 ac-
ceptance of our constitution and the estab-
lishment 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 guar-
antee for the life, liberty, and property of
the citizen.
It has failed to establish any public sys-
tem of education, although possessed of al-
most 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 con-
tinuance of civil liberty, or the capacity for
self-government.
It has suffered the military comman-
dants stationed among us to exercise arbi-
trary acts of oppression and tyranny; thus
trampling upon .the most sacred rights of the
citizen 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 represen-
tation.
It has demanded the surrender of a num-
ber of our citizens, and ordered military de-
tachments 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 desper-
adoes, and authorizing them to seize our ves-
sels, and convey the property of our citizens
to far distant ports of confiscation.
It denies us the right of worshipping the
Almighty according to the dictates of our own
consciences, by the support of a national re-
ligion calculated to promote the temporal in-
terests 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 defense,
the rightful property of freemen, and formid-
able 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 revolu-TEXAS ALMANAC-1968-1969
74
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Texas Almanac, 1968-1969, book, 1967; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth113809/m1/76/: accessed May 5, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.