On this date, 181 years ago and in the midst of the siege of The Alamo, Texas declared its independence from Mexico. Just four days later, The Alamo would fall, the brave defenders never even knowing that this document had been penned.
While it lacks the deep poetic beauty of the American Declaration of Independence, these words are still inspiring, and worth a read.
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 ever ready 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
defence, 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.
[Signed, in the order shown on the handwritten document]
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. Bunton
Thos. J. Gazley
R. M. Coleman
Sterling C. Robertson
Richard Ellis, President
of the Convention and Delegate
from Red River
James Collinsworth
Edwin Waller
Asa Brigham
Charles B. Stewart
Thomas Barnett
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 Parmer
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
