Texas Declaration of Independence
The Texas Declaration of Independence was the formal declaration of independence of the Republic of Texas from Mexico in the Texas Revolution. It was adopted of Convention of 1836 at Washington-on-the-Brazos and signed on March 2, 1836.
Richard Ellis, president of the convention, appointed a committee of five; George C. Childress, Edward Conrad, James Gaines, Bailey Hardeman, and Collin McKinney, to write the declaration, but the declaration was largely the work of Childress. Among others, the declaration mentions the following reasons for the separation:
- The 1824 Constitution of Mexico establishing a federal republic had been usurped and changed into a centralist military dictatorship under Antonio López de Santa Anna.
- The Mexican government had invited settlers to Texas and promised them constitutional liberty and republican government, but then reneged on these guarantees.
- Texas was in union with the Mexican state of Coahuila as Coahuila y Tejas, with the capital in distant Saltillo, and thus the affairs of Texas were decided at a great distance from the province and in the Spanish language.
- Political rights to which the settlers had previously been accustomed, such as the right to bear arms and the right to trial by jury, were denied.
- No system of public education had been established.
- The settlers were not allowed freedom of religion.
Based upon the United States Declaration of Independence, the Texas Declaration also contains many memorable expressions of American political principles:
"the right of trial by jury, that palladium of civil liberty, and only safe guarantee for the life, liberty, and property of the citizen."
"our arms ... are essential to our defence, the rightful property of freemen, and formidable only to tyrannical governments."
Signers
- Richard Ellis, President of the Convention and Delegate from Red River
- James Collinsworth
- Edwin Waller
- Asa Brigham
- John S. D. Byrom
- Jose Francisco Ruiz
- Jose Antonio Navarro
- Jesse B. Badgett
- William D. Lacy
- William Menifee
- John Fisher
- Matthew Caldwell
- William Motley
- Lorenzo de Zavala
- Stephen H. Everett
- George W. Smyth
- Elijah Stapp
- Claiborne West
- William. B. Scates
- Michel B. Menard
- Augustine B. Hardin
- J. W. Burton
- Thomas J. Gazley
- Robert M. Coleman
- Sterling C. Robertson
- George C. Childress
- Bailey Hardeman
- Robert Potter
- Thomas Jefferson Rusk
- Charles S. Taylor
- John S. Roberts
- Robert Hamilton
- Collin McKinney
- Albert H. Latimer
- James Power
- Sam Houston
- David Thomas
- Edward Conrad
- Martin Parmer
- Edwin O. Legrand
- Stephen W. Blount
- James Gaines
- William Clark, Jr.
- Sydney O. Pennington
- William Carrol Crawford
- John Turner
- Benjamin Briggs Goodrich
- George Washington Barnett
- James G. Swisher
- Jesse Grimes
- Samuel Rhoads Fisher
- John W. Moore
- John W. Bower
- Samuel A. Maverick (from Bejar)
- Sam P. Carson
- Andrew Briscoe
- James B. Woods
- Herbert Simms Kimble, Secretary