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Uncle Sam |
It
is proper that we should witness the birth of the new republic; for, up
to the 2nd day of March, 1836, every Texas officer was bound by his
oath, and both officers and citizens by allegiance, to the Mexican
federal constitution of 1824.
The Texan convention met on Tuesday, the 1st day of March, at
Washington, on the Brazos, and organized by electing Richard Ellis
president, and H. S. Kimball secretary. On the following day, March 2,
1836, the delegates solemnly declared the political connection of Texas
with Mexico for ever at an end, and, as the representatives of the
people of Texas, constituted her a free, sovereign, and INDEPENDENT
REPUBLIC, fully invested with all the rights and attributes which
properly belong to independent nations. The causes set forth in that
document, as producing the separation, were truthful enough, and such as
would justify any nation, under like circumstances, in taking a similar
step. The convention wisely took no time to look into the merits of the
controversy between Governor Smith and his council, but passed it by,
and proceeded to divide out the work of framing a constitution for the
new republic. Other matters, however, claimed immediate attention. The
threatening attitude of
Santa
Anna required that Texas should not only have an army to oppose him,
but that such army should have a commander-in-chief. Accordingly, on the
4th of March, on motion of James Collingsworth,
Sam Houston
was unanimously chosen to that responsible office, his authority
extending over the regulars, volunteers, and militia, in the field. On
the 6th, he received his instructions, submitting the point of his
headquarters to his own judgment. The more energetic organization of the
militia also required attention. The convention made all able-bodied
males, between seventeen and fifty years of age, subject to military
duty. One individual was appointed for each municipality, to form a list
of all such within his boundary. The names were to be drawn until the
number, at any time called for, was obtained ; and those so drawn were
bound to serve, under the severest penalties—for a term, however, not
exceeding six months. To increase the number of volunteers, and
encourage those already in the service, lands were promised. To all such
then in the service, and who should so continue during the war, were
granted twelve hundred and eighty acres ; for six months' service, six
hundred and forty acres ; for three months' service, three hundred and
twenty acres ; and for all who should thereafter enter the service, and
continue in it six months, and during the war, nine hundred and sixty
acres. Such were the inducements offered.
The convention, through its president, sent forth to the people of the
United States a stirring address, appealing for sympathy and aid.
Below, we document the brave men who signed the Texas
Declaration of Independence:
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. Byrom |
38 |
Georgia |
Florida. |
Fras. Ruis |
54 |
Bexar, Texas
|
|
J. Ant°. 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 Parer |
58 |
Virginia |
Missouri. |
E. O. Legend |
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 |
— |
|
|
* Not present at the signing.
The above is from a statement furnished in the convention, to Dr.
B. B. Goodrich, by the members themselves.
|
Text of the 1836 Republic of
Texas Declaration of Independence:
UNANIMOUS DECLARATION OF
INDEPENDENCE,
BY THE
DELEGATES OF THE PEOPLE OF TEXAS.
In General Convention, at the town of Washington, on the
2d 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 their inestimable and inalienable
rights, becomes an instrument in the hands of evil rules 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 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 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 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 connexion
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 Ana, 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 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 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 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 ports for confiscation.
It denies us the right of
worshipping the Almighty according to 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 for 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, the massacre the inhabitants of our defenceless
frontiers.
It has been, during the whole
time of our connexion 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. They then took
up arms in defence of the National Constitution. They appealed
to their Mexican brethren for assistance. Their appeal has been
made in vain: though months have elapsed, no sympathetic
response has yet been heard from the interior. They 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 despotism; 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 connexion 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 States; 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,
Thomas Barnett, of Austin,
James Collinsworth,
Edwin Waller,
Asa Brigham
J. S. D. Byrom, of Brazoria,
Francisco Ruis,
Antonio Navaro,
Jesse B. Badgett, of Bexar,
Wm. D. Lacy,
Wm. Menifee, of Colorado,
James Gains,
M. B. Menard,
A. B. Hardin, of Liberty,
Baily Hardiman, of Matagorda,
J. W. Bunton,
Thos. J. Gazeley,
R. M. Coleman, of Mina,
Robert Potter,
Thos. J. Rusk,
Charles S. Taylor,
Jno. S. Roberts, of Nacogdoches
Robert Hamilton,
Collin McKinnee,
Alb. H. Lattimer, of Red River,
Martin Palmer, |
W. Clark, jr., of Sabine,
John Fisher,
Matt. Caldwell, of Gonzales,
Wm. Motley, of Goliad,
L. de Zavala, of Harrisburg,
S. C. Robertson,
Geo. C. Childress, of Milam,
Steph. H. Everett,
Geo. W. Smith, of Jasper,
Elijah Stapp, of Jackson,
Claiborne West,
Wm. B. Scates, of Jefferson,
E. O. Legrand,
S. W. Blount, of San Augustine,
Syd. O. Bennington,
W. C. Crawford, of Shelby,
J. Power,
Sam. Houston,
David Thomas,
Edward Conrad, of Refugio,
John Turner, of San Patricio,
B. Briggs Goodrich,
G. W. Barnett,
James G. Swisher,
Jesse Grimes, of Washington. |
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