THE TEXAS

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
MARCH 2, 1836
 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 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.
Richard Ellis, President Bailey Hardeman
of the Convention and Delegate Rob. Potter
from Red River. Thomas Jefferson Rusk
Chas. S. Taylor
John S. Roberts
Charles B. Stewart Robert Hamilton
Tho. Barnett Collin McKinney
John S. D. Byrom Albert H. Latimer
Francis Ruis James Power
J. Antonio Navarro Sam Houston
Jesse B. Badgett David Thomas
Wm D. Lacy Edwd. Conrad
William Menifee Martin Parmer
Jn. Fisher Edwin O. Legrand
Matthew Caldwell Stephen W. Blount
William Motley Jms. Gaines
Lorenzo de Zavala Wm. Clark, Jr.
Stephen H. Everett Sydney O. Pennington
George W. Smyth Wm. Carrol Crawford
Elijah Stapp Jno. Turner
Claiborne West Benj. Briggs Goodrich
Wm. B. Scates G. W. Barnett
M. B. Menard James G. Swisher
A. B. Hardin Jesse Grimes
J. W. Burton S. Rhoads Fisher
Thos. J. Gazley John W. Moore
R. M. Coleman John W. Bower
Sterling C. Robertson Saml. A. Maverick (from Bejar)
James Collinsworth Sam P. Carson
Edwin Waller A. Briscoe
Asa Brigham J. B. Woods
Geo. C. Childress H. S. Kimble, Secretary