Texas Almanac, 1954-1955 Page: 72
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TEXAS ALMANAC-1954-1955
is intended only as an outline of principal
factual history. On the following pages
of this volume will be found further data
on the economic, civic and cultural prog-
ress of Texas.
Throughout its history, diversity has
been the outstanding characteristic of the
region that we know as Texas today.
There was diversity in Indian race and
culture at the dawn of history. There is
diversity in the physical conditions and
the ways of life of Texans today. Yet
there has developed a feeling of unitythrough pride in accomplishment that has
come to be known abroad as the Texas
spirit.
Texas today is in state of swift transi-
tion in many matters. Its' opportunities
for .future economic, civic and cultural
progress are great. These opportunities
axe matched by problems, political and
economic, that increase with the increas-
ing momentum of Texas development
Their solution will depend upon the wis-
dom, integrity and energy of Texans and
their leadership.Texas Declaration of Independence-Signers
The Declaration of Independence of the
Republic of Texas was adopted by the dele-
gates of the people of Texas, in general
convention at the town of Washington-on-the-
Brazos, March 2, 1836. (See p. 56.) The text
follows, with the names of the signers at the
end of the text:
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 inesti-
mable and inalienable rights, becomes an in-
strument 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 sub-
stantial existence, and the whole nature of
their government has been forcibly changed
Without their consent, from a restricted Fed-
erative Republic, composed of sovereign
states, to a consolidated central military des-
potism, 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 in-
struments of tyrants; when, long after the
spirit of the Constitution has departed, mod-
eration 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 re-
garded, 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 conse-
quence of such acts of malfeasance and abdi-
cation 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 peo-
ple to appeal to first principles, -and take
their political affairs into their own hands
in extreme cases, enjoins it as a right toward
themselves, and a sacred obligation to their
posterity, to abolish such government, and
create another in its stead, calculated to res-
cue them from impending dangers, and to
secure their future welfare and happiness.
Nations, as well as individuals, are amen-
able for their acts to the public opinion of
mankind. A statement of a part of our griev-
ances 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 ofo the earth.
The Mexican Government, by its coloniza-
tion laws, invited and induced the Anglo-
American population of Texas to colonize its
wilderness, under the pledged faith of a writ-
ten Constitution, that they should continue to
enjoy that constitutional liberty and repub-
lican government to which they had been
habituated in the -land of their birth, theUnited States of America. In this expectation
they have been cruelly disappointed, inas-
much as the Mexican nation has acquiesced
in the late changes made in the government
by Gen. 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 intol-
erable 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 Con-
gress, 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 accept-
ance of our constitution and the establish-
ment 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 guar-
antee 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 en-
lightened it is idle to expect the continuance
of civil liberty, or the capacity for self-gov-
ernment.
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 representa-
tion.
It has demanded the surrender of a number
of our citizens, and ordered military detach-
ments to seize and carry them into the inte-
rior for trial, in contempt of the civil authori-
ties, and in defiance of the laws and- the
Constitution.
It has made piratical attacks upon oui
commerce by commissioning foreign despera-
does, and authorizing them to seize our ves-
sels end convey the property of our citizens
to far-distant ports for confiscation.
It denies us the right of worshiping the
Almighty according to the dictates of our own
consciences, by the support of a national reli-
gion 'calculated to promote the temporal in-
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Texas Almanac, 1954-1955, book, 1953; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117168/m1/74/?q=waco+tornado&rotate=270: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.