Texas Almanac, 1943-1944 Page: 50
[338] p. : ill. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this book.
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TEXAS ALMANAC.-1943-,944.
The period between the Mexican War and
the Civil War was marked by a number of
bloody conflicts with Indians which ended
with the removal of most of the red men to
federal reservations outside Texas Rangers
were required also to end the depredations
of cattle thieves and other outlaws along the
Rio Grande. The most formidable band of
raiders was that led by Juan N. Cortinas.
Many South Texas ranchers suffered from
the depredations of Cortinas and his men in
the early part of 1860. In 1859, he and 100
of his men had taken possession of Browns-
ville for a short time, terrorizing the citizens
and killing three Americans Texas Rangers
invaded Mexican soil and put the Cortinas
army to flight.
During Civil War.
During the Civil War, the Ranger organiza-
tion was neglected Many members and for-
mer members of this frontier fighting outfit
enlisted in Terry's Texas Rangers, which
made an admirable record in the Confederate
Army. In the Reconstruction period, the
Rangers were reorganized as the state police
during the administration of Gov E. J Davis,
and were used to enforce carpetbagger laws
many of which were unpopular with Texas
citizens. The state police was abandoned
with the overthrow of the Reconstruction
government
In 1874, the state police body was succeed-
ed by two organizations of Rangers. One,
known as the Special Force of Rangers, put
down banditry on the Rio Grande. A larger
body, officially called for some time the
Frontier Battalion, was made up of mobile
companies used wherever needed, Indian
raiders in Northwest Texas, cattle thieves
on the Rio Grande and train robbers operat-
Ing out of Denton County kept these Rangers
especially busy during the remainder of the
decade
In 1877, the Rangers restored order in the
westernmost part of Texas after the El PasoSalt War-resulting from a dispute over the
removal of salt from salt lakes near the
Guadalupe Mountains-had led to the killing
of a number of citizens. One of the most
celebrated exploits of the Rangers came in
the following year, with the killing of Sam
Bass and several members of his train robber
band at Round Rock.
After Passing of Frontier.
In the following decade, the Rangers con-
tinued to catch cattle thieves and also oper-
ated against fence-cutters, in the conflict be-
tween cattlemen and laimeis.
By this time, the frontier had almost dis-
appeared, and the activities of the Rangers
were directed not so much against Indians
anr Mexicans as against outlaws of their own
race. This gradual change made the service
distasteful to many who had fought coura-
geously on the frontier. It also tended to
lessen the popularity of the Rangers, espe-
cially since more and more of the counties
were organized and many Sheriffs resented
the invasion of their teiritoiy by outside-
and sometimes uninvited-forces. Following
World War I, use of the Rangei s to enforce
liquor prohibition also made the organization
less popular in some quarters.
Following World War I, the Ranger force
was allowed to dwindle and often was tam-
p ered with by politics. In 1935, however, the
angers were reorganized and, with the State
Highway Patrol, were placed under a new
Department of Public Safety. Provision was
made for the adoption of modern methods of
detecting crime.
The Texas Rangers today comprise one di-
vision of the State Department of Public
Safety. The Texas Rangers are charged with
the enforcement of laws governing major
crimes, riots and insurrections, while the
Highway Patrol, another division of the de-
partment, has as its primary function, the
enforcement of traffic and safety lawsTexas Declaration of independence-Signers.
The Declaration of Independence of the Re-
public of Texas was adopted by the delegates
of the people of Texas, in general convention
at the town of Washington, on the 2d day of
March, 1836 (See p 42.)
When a government has ceased to protect
the lives, liberty and property of the people
from whom its'4egitimate powers are derived.
and for the advancement of whose happiness
it was instituted, and so far from being a
guarantee for the enjoyment of their inestim-
able 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 sub-
stantial existence, and the whole nature of
their government has been forcibly changed
without their consent, from a restricted Fed-
erative Republic, composed of sovereign
states, to a consolidated central military des-
potism, in which every interest is disregarded
ut that of the army and the priesthood, both
the eternal enemies of civil liberty, 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 abdi-
cation on the part of the government, anarchy
prevails, and civil society is dissolved into its
original elements in such a crisis, the firstlaw of nature, the right of self-preservation
the inherent and inalienable right of the peo-
ple to appeal to first principles, and take
their political affairs into their own hands
in extreme cases, enjoins it as a right toward
themselves, and a sacred obligation to their
posterity, to abolish such government, and
create another in its stead, calculated to res-
cue them from impending 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 rexas to colonize its
wilderness, under the pledged faith of a writ-
ten Constitution, that they should continue to
enjoy that constitutional liberty and repub-
lican 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, inas-
much as the Mexican Nation has acquiesced
in the late changes made in the government
by Gen. 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 intol-
erable of all tyranny, the combined despotism
of the sword and the priesthood.
It hath sacrificed our welfare to the State
of Coahulla, by which our interests have been
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Texas Almanac, 1943-1944, book, 1943; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117165/m1/52/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.