[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 3]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 3141-3142]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  CELEBRATING TEXAS' INDEPENDENCE DAY

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. JOE BARTON

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, March 2, 2011

  Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in celebration of 
Texas' Independence Day which occurred 175 years ago and to commemorate 
the occasion I would like to share with the House, the Texas 
Declaration of Independence signed on this day in the year 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

[[Page 3142]]

     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, until 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,
       Richard Ellis, President of the Convention and Delegate 
     from Red River.
       Charles B. Stewart, Tho. Barnett, James Collinsworth, Edwin 
     Waller, Asa Brigham, 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. Burton, Thos. J. Gazley, R. M. Coleman, 
     Sterling C. Robertson, 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.

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