Life and select literary remains of Sam Houston of Texas/Appendix

by William Carey Crane

APPENDIX.

 

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TEXAN DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

In IN the General Convention of the People of Texas at Washington on the Brazos, March 8, 1836, Mr. George C. Childress offered the following resolutions:

Resolved, That the President appoint a Committee, to consist of five delegates, to draft a Declaration of Independence.

Mr. Martin Parmer offered the following as a substitute:

Resolved, That the President appoint one delegate from each municipality, as a Committee to draft a Declaration of Independence.

Mr. Parmer's resolution was negatived, and that of Mr. Childress adopted; whereupon the President appointed as the Committee Messrs. George C. Childress, of Milam; James Gaines, of Sabine; Edward Conrad, of Refugio; Collin McKinney, of Red River; and Bailey Hardeman, of Matagorda.

On the second day, March 2d, Mr. Robert Potter moved the appointment of a Committee of one from each municipality to draft a Constitution for the (contemplated) Republic of Texas, which was carried, and Messrs. Martin Parmer, Chairman, Robert Potter, Charles B. Stewart, Edwin Waller, Jesse Grimes, Robert M. Coleman, John Fisher, John W. Bunton, James Gaines, Lorenzo de Zavala, Stephen H. Everitt, Bailey Hardeman, Elijah Stapp, William C. Crawford, Claiborne West, James Power, Jose Antonio Navarro, Collin McKinney, William Menefee, William Motley, and Michael B. Menard were appointed the committee.

On the same day, March 2d, Mr. Childress, Chairman of the Committee, reported the draft of a Declaration of Independence, and "asked that the same be received by the Convention as their report."

Here I quote from the Journals:

"Mr. Houston moved that the report be received by the Convention, which, on being seconded, was done.

"On Mr. Collingsworth's motion, seconded, the House resolved into a com mittee of the whole, upon the report of the Committee on ndependence.

"Mr. Collingsworth was called to the chair, whereupon Mr. Houston intro duced the following resolution:

''Resolved, That the Declaration of Independence, reported by the Committee, be adopted; that the same be engrossed and signed by the delegates of this Convention.

"And the question being put, the resolution was unanimously adopted."

The Declaration of Independence was thus unanimously adopted, enrolled. and signed on the second day of the session—being March 2d—as follows:

The Declaration of Independence, made by the Delegates of the People of Texas, in General Convention, at Washington, March 2, 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 evef 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 the petitions and remonstrances being disregarded, the agents who bear them are thrown into dungeons, and mercenary armies sent forth to enforce 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 toward 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 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, 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 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, the 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 domains), 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 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 on 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 worshiping the Almighty according to the dictates of our own conscience, by the support of a national religion, calculated to promote the temporal interests 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 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 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 (he people of Texas, until they reached that point at w^hich 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 made 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 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 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 intentionis, we fearlessly and confidently commit the issue to the Supreme Arbiter of the destinies of nations.

In witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names.

Richard Ellis,5em

President and Delegate from Red River.

H. S. Kimble, Secretary.

[The names of the signers will be found on the following page.]

On the 16th March, the Convention adopted the Executive Ordinance, by which was constituted the Government ad interim of the Republic of Texas. The Constitution of the Republic of Texas was adopted at a late hour on the night of the 17th of March, but was neither engrossed nor enrolled for the signature of the members prior to the adjournment next day. The Secretary was instructed to enroll it for presentation. As I learn from the Hon. Jesse Grimes, Mr. Kimble, the Secretary, took it to Nashville, Tennessee, where it was published in one of the papers, from which it was republished in a Cincinnati paper, and from the latter copied into the Texas Telegraph of August 2d of the same year, being its first publication in Texas. No enrolled copy having been preserved, this printed copy was recognized and adopted.

Names, Age, Place of Birth, and Former Residence of the Signers of the Texan Declaration of Independence, March 2, 1836.

Names	Age	Place of Birth	Former Residence
Richard Ellis	54	Virginia	Alabama.
C. B. Stewart	30	South Carolina	Louisiana.
James Collingsworth	30	Tennessee	Tennessee.
Edwin Waller	35	Virginia	Missouri.
Asa Brigham	46	Massachusetts	Louisiana.
J. S. D. Byron	38	Georgia	Florida.
Fras. Ruis	54	Bexar, Texas	——————
J. Anto. Navarro	41	Bexar, Texas	——————
J. B. Badgett	29	North Carolina	Arkansas Territory.
W. D. Lacy	28	Kentucky	Tennessee.
William Menifee	40	Tennessee	Alabama.
John Fisher	36	Virginia	Virginia.
M. Coldwell	38	Kentucky	Missouri.
W. Motley	24	Virginia	Kentucky.
L. D. Zavala	47	Yucatan	Mexico.
George W. Smyth	33	North Carolina	Alabama.
S. H. Everitt	29	New York	New York.
E. Stapp	53	Virginia	Missouri.
Clae. West	36	Tennessee	Louisiana.
W. B. Scates	30	Virginia	Kentucky.
M B. Menard	31	Canada	Illinois.
A B. Hardin	38	Georgia	Tennessee.
J. W. Bunton	28	Tennessee	Tennessee.
Thomas G. Gazeley	35	New York	Louisiana.
R. M. Coleman	37	Kentucky	Kentucky.
S. C. Robertson*	50	North Carolina	Tennessee.
George C. Childress*	32	Tennessee	Tennessee.
B. Hardiman	41	Tennessee	Tennessee.
R. Potter	36	North Carolina	North Carolina.
Thomas J. Rusk	29	South Carolina	Georgia.
Charles S. Taylor	28	England	New York.
John S. Roberts	40	Virginia	Louisiana.
R. Hamilton	53	Scotland	North Carolina.
C. McKinney	70	New Jersey	Kentucky.
A, H. Lattimer	27	Tennessee	Tennessee.
James Power	48	Ireland	Louisiana.
Sam Houston	43	Virginia	Tennessee.
David Thomas	35	Tennessee	Tennessee.
E. Conrad	26	Pennsylvania	Pennsylvania.
Martin Parmer	58	Virginia	Missouri.
E. O. Legrand	33	North Carolina	Alabama.
S. W. Blount	28	Georgia	Georgia.
James Gaines	60	Virginia	Louisiana.
W. Clark, Jr	37	North Carolina	Georgia.
S. O. Pennington	27	Kentucky	Arkansas Territory.
W. C. Crawford	31	North Carolina	Alabama.
John Turner	34	North Carolina	Tennessee.
B. B. Goodrich	37	Virginia	Alabama.
G. W. Barnett	43	South Carolina	Mississippi.
J. G. Swisher	41	Tennessee	Tennessee.
Jesse Grimes	48	North Carolina	Alabama.
S. Rhoads Fisher*	41	Pennsylvania	Pennsylvania.
Samuel A. Maverick*	29	South Carolina	South Carolina.
John White Bower*	27	Georgia	Arkansas Territory.
James B. Woods*	34	Kentucky	Kentucky.
Andrew Briscoe*	—	——————	——————
John W. Moore*	—	——————	——————
Thomas Barnett	—	——————	——————

Members who failed to reach the Convention in time: James Kerr, from Jackson, born in Kentucky, September 24, 1790, came to Texas in 1825; John J. Linn, from Victoria, born in Ireland, in 1802, came to Texas in 1830; Juan Antonio Padilla, from Victoria, a Mexican.

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*Not present at the signing. The above is from a statement furnished in the Convention to Dr. B. b. Goodrich by the members themselves.