[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 3]
[House]
[Page 3069]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            GOD BLESS TEXAS

  (Mr. BARTON asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. BARTON. Mr. Speaker, 179 years ago, in a hamlet in what is now 
Grimes County, Texas, called Washington-on-the-Brazos, a handful of 
brave Texans voted to declare independence from Mexico. We call this 
day Texas Independence Day.
  As those brave men were declaring their independence at a decrepit 
old mission in San Antonio, Texas, less than 200 patriots--led by 
people like Davy Crockett and William Barret Travis and James Bowie--
were fending off an army of somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 Mexican 
soldiers under the leadership of a General Santa Anna.
  The Alamo fell on March 6, but on April 21, 1836, General Sam 
Houston, at a bayou called San Jacinto, led about 350 Texans in a 
surprise attack on the Mexican Army and won independence for Texas from 
Mexico.
  God bless Texas, and God bless all those patriots 179 years ago for 
what they did.

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