The Unanimous Declaration of Independence
made by the Delegates of the People of Texas
(March 2, 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 their 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 enforce a new government upon them at the
point of the bayonet.
When, in consequence of such acts of malfeasance and abduction
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 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 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 a just cause, contemptuously
rejected.
It incarcerated in a dungeon, for a long time, one of our citizens,
for no other cause but a zealous endeavour 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
Texas Declaration of Independence (March 2, 1836) 213
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 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 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 na-
tional 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 defenceless 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 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 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
Texas Declaration of Independence (March 2, 1836) 215
the destruction of their liberty, and the substitution therefor 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.
Source: The Papers of the Texas Revolution, 1835–1836, gen. ed. John H. Jenkins,
10 vols. (Austin, 1973), IV, 493–496.