[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 30 (Wednesday, March 2, 2011)]
[House]
[Page H1462]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         TEXAS INDEPENDENCE DAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Gene Green) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GENE GREEN of Texas. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
  Today, March 2, 2011, marks Texas Independence Day. A hundred and 
seventy-five years ago, the Texas Declaration of Independence was 
ratified by the Convention of 1836 on Washington-on-the-Brazos in 
Texas. This is an important day for Texas, and patriotic Texans observe 
this occasion with great pride.
  In 1824, a military dictatorship took over in Mexico abolishing the 
Mexican constitution. The new military dictatorship refused to provide 
trial by jury, freedom of religion, public education for their 
citizens, and allowed for the confiscation of firearms--this last one 
particularly intolerable, particularly for Texans.
  The Texas Declaration of Independence states that Texas' government 
had been ``forcibly changed, without their consent, from a restricted 
federative republic, composed of sovereign states, to a consolidated 
central military despotism.'' It stated that because of the injustice 
of Santa Anna's tyrannical government, Texans were severing their 
connection with the Mexican nation and declaring themselves ``a free, 
sovereign, and independent republic fully invested with all the rights 
and attributes'' that belong to independent nations; and a declaration 
that they ``fiercely and confidently'' committed their decision to 
``the Supreme Arbiter of the destinies of Nations.''

                              {time}  1030

  The Texas Declaration of Independence was needed because this 
military dictatorship had ceased to protect the lives, liberty, and 
property of the people of Texas. Failure to provide these basic rights 
violated the sacred contract between a government and the people, and 
Texans at that time, and want to still today, stand up for their 
rights. In response, the Mexican army marched to Texas, waging a war on 
the land and the people, enforcing the decrees of the military 
dictatorship with brute force and without any democratic legitimacy.
  Today, 175 years later, Texas President and Governor of Texas, Sam 
Houston, and other delegates signed the Texas Declaration of 
Independence. General Santa Anna's army besieged the independence 
forces at the Alamo in San Antonio. Four days after the signing of this 
Declaration of Independence, the Alamo fell with her commander, 
Lieutenant Colonel William Barret Travis, and former Tennessee 
Congressman Davy Crockett and approximately 200 other Texas defenders. 
All these men were killed in action in a heroic sacrifice for Texas 
freedom.
  If this tragedy were not enough, weeks later Santa Anna's Army 
massacred 300 unarmed Texans at Goliad on March 27 of 1836. In a 
dramatic turnaround, Texans achieved their independence several weeks 
later on April 21, 1836. Roughly 900 members of the Texan army 
overpowered a much larger Mexican army in a surprise attack at the 
Battle of San Jacinto in Harris County, Texas. This battle is 
memorialized along the San Jacinto River with the San Jacinto Monument 
in our congressional district. The monument's larger than the monument 
here in Washington, the Washington Monument. Sam Houston High School, 
which we have a lot of schools in our district named for Sam Houston, 
actually received a Texas historical marker about 3 weeks ago.
  Today we give thanks to the many Texans that sacrificed for the 
freedom we enjoy today. God bless Texas and God bless America.

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