Home › Multilingual Archive Index › Texas Declaration of Independence

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 at the Convention of 1836 at Washington-on-the-Brazos on March 2, 1836, and formally signed the following day after errors were noted in the text.

Richard Ellis, president of the convention , appointed a committee of five; George C. Childress, Edward Conrad, James Gaines, Bailey Hardeman, and Collin McKinney (the last being the oldest member of the convention at age 70), to write the declaration, but the declaration was largely the work of Childress. As the text was completed in only one day after the committee was appointed, it is largely believed that Childress came to the convention already prepared with a draft.

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 keep and 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."

Signatures

• Richard Ellis, President of the Convention and Delegate from Red River
• Charles B. Stewart
• Thomas Barnett
• John S. D. Byrom
• José Francisco Ruiz
• José Antonio Navarro
• Jesse B. Badgett
• William D. Lacy
• William Menefee
• 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
• 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
• James Collinsworth
• Edwin Waller
• Asa Brigham
• George C. Childress
• Bailey Hardeman
• Robert Potter
• Thomas Jefferson Rusk
• Charles S. Taylor
• John S. Roberts
• Robert Hamilton
• Collin McKinney
• Albert Hamilton Latimer
• James Power
• Sam Houston
• David Thomas
• Edward Conrad
• Martin Parmer
• Edwin O. Legrand
• Stephen W. Blount
• Robert Thomas 'James' Gaines
• William Clark, Jr.
• Sydney O. Pennington
• William Carroll Crawford
• John Turner
• Herbert Simms Kimble, Secretary

See also

• Texas Independence Day
• Timeline of the Republic of Texas

External links

• The Declaration of Independence, 1836 from Gammel's Laws of Texas, Vol. I. hosted by the Portal to Texas History.
• Lone Star Junction Site
• Special Report: Texas Independence Day by Texas Cooking
• Texas Declaration of Independence from the Handbook of Texas Online