THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
Made by the Delegates of the People of Texas, in General Convention, at Washington, on March 2, 1836
[Transcribed by ©Donna Walton, 2007 from "Texas Scrap Book". ]

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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 defense- 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 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 defense 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 there for 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

In witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names.

Richard Ellis, President and Delegate from Red River
H. S. Kimble, Secretary

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	Bexas, Texas
J. Anto. Navarro	41	Bexas, 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	Yucan	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
* Not present at the signing

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