Texas Declaration of Independence, 1836 Introduction Questions for

Texas Declaration of Independence, 1836

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Introduction

On March 2, 1836, Texas formally declared its independence from Mexico. The Texas

Declaration of Independence was signed at Washington-on-the-Brazos, now commonly referred

to as the “birthplace of Texas.” Similar to the United States Declaration of Independence, this

document focused on the rights of citizens to “life” and “liberty” but with an emphasis on the

“property of the citizen.”

The Texas Declaration of Independence was issued during a revolution against the Mexican

government that began in October 1835 following a series of government edicts including

dissolution of state legislatures, disarmament of state militias, and abolition of the Constitution

of 1824.

By December 1835, Texans (Anglo-American settlers) and Tejanos (Texans of mixed Mexican

and Indian descent) captured the town of San Antonio. Two months later, on February 23, 1836,

Mexican troops under General Antonio López de Santa Anna arrived in San Antonio to retake

the city. Although Sam Houston ordered Texans to abandon San Antonio, a group of rebels

decided to defend the town and make their stand at an abandoned Spanish mission, the Alamo.

For twelve days, Mexican forces laid siege to the Alamo. On March 6, four days after Texas

declared independence, Mexican troops scaled the mission’s walls; 183 defenders were killed,

including several Mexicans who had fought for Texas independence, and their oil-soaked bodies

were set on fire outside the Alamo. The Republic of Texas won its independence on April 21,

1836, with a final battle along the San Jacinto River.

Questions for Discussion

Read the introduction and transcript and view the image. Then apply your knowledge of

American history as well as the content of the document to answer the following questions:

1. Compare the Texas Declaration of Independence and the United States Declaration of

Independence. Identify and explain three similarities in content and format.

2. Why do you think the authors of the Texas Declaration chose to model their document on

Jefferson’s?

3. Which of the numerous accusations against the Mexican government indicated the

greatest area of conflict between the Anglo-Americans and the Mexican government?

You may list more than one conflict. Be prepared to explain your reasoning. (Note: In

order to answer this question, it will be beneficial to review the circumstances

surrounding the original settlement of Anglo-Americans in Mexican territory.)

4. How do you think current high school textbooks in Mexico describe this period of

history?

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Image

Texas Declaration of Independence, March 2, 1836 (Gilder Lehrman Institute, GLC02559)

Texas Declaration of Independence, 1836

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Transcript

UNANIMOUS

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE,

BY THE

DELEGATES OF THE PEOPLE OF TEXAS,

IN GENERAL CONVENTION,

AT THE TOWN OF WASHINGTON,

ON THE SECOND 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 their 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 abduction 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 right 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

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impending dangers, and to secure their 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 Santa

Ana, who having overturned the constitution of his country, now offers, as 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 hath 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 a just cause,

contemptuously rejected.

It incarcerated in a dungeon, for a long time, one of our citizens, for no other cause but a

zealous endeavour 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

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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 tyranny, thus trampling upon the most sacred rights of the citizen, 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

parts 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 the intent to lay waste our

territory, and drive us from homes; and has now a large mercenary army advancing, to carry on

against us a war of extermination.

It has, through its emmissaries, incited the merciless savage, with the tomahawk and

scalping knife, to massacre the inhabitants of our defenceless frontiers.

It has 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 tyrannical 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

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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 substitution therefor 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 deligates [sic], 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.

C.B. STEWART, } Austin.

THOMAS BARNETT. }

JAS. COLLINSWORTH, }

EDWIN WALLER, } Brazoria.

ASA BRIGHAM, }

J.S.D. BYROM. }

FRANCISCO RUIS, }

ANTONIO NAVARO, } Bexar.

JESSE B. BADGETT. }

WILLIAM D. LACY, } Colorado.

WILLIAM MENIFEE. }

JAMES GAINES, } Sabine.

W. CLARK, JR., }

JOHN FISHER, } Gonzales.

MATT. CALDWELL, }

WILLIAM MOTLEY, Goliad.

L. DE ZAVALA, Harrisburgh.

STEPH. H. EVERITT, } Jasper.

GEORGE W. SMITH, }

ELIJAH STAPP, Jackson.

CLAIBORNE WEST, } Jefferson.

WILLIAM B. SCATES }

M.B. MENARD, } Liberty.

A.B. HARDIN, }

BAILEY HARDIMAN, Matagorda.

J.W. BUNTON, }

THOS. J. GAZELEY, } Mina.

R.M. COLEMAN, }

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ROBERT POTTER, }

THOMAS J. RUSK, } Nacogdoches,

CH. S. TAYLOR, }

JOHN S. ROBERTS, }

ROBERT HAMILTON, }

COLLIN MCKINNEE, } Red River.

ALB. H. LATTIMER, }

MARTIN PARMER, }

E.O. LEGRAND, } San

Augustin.

STEPH. W. BLOUNT, }

SYD. O. PENNINGTON, } Shelby.

W. CAR’L CRAWFORD, }

JAMES POWER, }

SAM. HOUSTON, } Refugio.

DAVID THOMAS, }

EDWARD CONRAD, }

JOHN TURNER, San Patricio.

B. BRIGGS GOODRICH, }

G.W. BARNETT, } Washington.

JAMES G. SWISHER, }

JESSE GRIMES, }

Printed by Baker and Bordens, San Felipe de Austin.