While the Alamo was beseiged by invading Mexicans, this was hastily penned and signed on this day in 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 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, untill 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.