Thread: Remember, on this day, what got us here

Posted on Fri, Mar. 02, 2007

Remember, on this day, what got us here
By Bob Ray Sanders

Star-Telegram Staff Writer
ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES


Only a few days after Texas declared its independence 171 years ago today, the Alamo fell, but its defenders are revered.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 ...

Thus begins the Texas Declaration of Independence, adopted unanimously on this day 171 years ago.

A rebellious group of "Texicans," having grown tired of broken promises and assaults on their civil rights by the Mexican government, hastily met in the Convention of 1836 to adopt the document that would decree "our eternal political separation" from Mexico.

Even as the declaration was being written overnight on March 1-2, 1836, another group of brave men, almost 200 miles away, were holed up in the Alamo, surrounded by thousands of Santa Anna's troops. Four days after the Declaration of Independence was adopted, the Alamo fell, along with its defenders.

The only survivors of the onslaught that morning, according to the Texas Almanac, were "a few women, children and black slaves."

What happened at the Alamo became the rallying cry as the Texas army, under the leadership of Sam Houston, went on to defeat the Mexicans at San Jacinto.

Although the Republic was short-lived -- just nine years until Texas joined the union in 1845 -- Texans remain proud of that history of independence and the men and women who brought it about.

I am a Texan.

If nothing else, my name gives me away. Texans are famous for having first and middle names that are used as if they are one. You've heard them: Billy Joes, Jim Bobs, Betty Lynns and, yes, Bob Rays are found all over the state.

My roots are deep in this fertile soil, well over 140 years in Tarrant County alone.

I have the distinction of being able to connect -- through legacy, if not by blood -- with both the slaves who survived the Alamo and the many Anglos who pledged to William B. Travis that bleak March day that they were willing to fight to the death. And, yes, I feel a connection to hero Juan Seguin, who distinguished himself in battle and in politics.

The banner of the Republic, the Lone Star Flag that is our state flag today, is still revered as a symbol of a people and spirit that fought off tyranny and went on to conquer an expansive wilderness that is now the second most-populous state in the country.

The people of Texas adore this state's uniqueness of having existed under six flags, being able to balance and embrace its Western and Southern heritages, as well as its competing rural and urban interests. At the same time, the state continues to be a confluence of cultures that adds to the richness of our diversity.

Those who call Texas home can argue about our differences, and even debate the positives and negatives of our connections to the nations whose flags have flown over this land.

But we would do better to talk about our similarities and what brings us together rather than what separates us.

The men who gathered at Washington-on-the-Brazos more than 17 decades ago could not have imagined what their offspring and an influx of immigrants would be able to do with this once rugged land that they knew was full of promise. Nor would they have been able to guess that their descendants would one day stand along with the descendants of slaves and Mexicans and others in governing our state, overseeing our major institutions and working together to secure a brighter future for coming generations.

They probably could not have foreseen how closely related Texas and Mexico would be today, coexisting with many shared hopes, an economic codependence and a host of challenges that won't disappear anytime soon. Our futures are inextricably tied, despite conflicts over immigration and trade or anything else.

We Texans are often accused of being proud to a fault, bordering on conceit and obnoxiousness. But believe me, it is not arrogance that we intend to display when we celebrate our heritage and accomplishments; it is just that we fervently honor our past and those who were part of it, and we relish what they handed down to us.

On this Texas Independence Day, we should give thanks for the sacrifices of those Texans -- from all walks of life -- who came before us, and we should rededicate ourselves to their ideals, understanding that they had their faults as well as their outstanding attributes.

And while you contemplate these things, consider the final words of that document adopted in 1836:

We, therefore, the delegates with plenary powers of the people of Texas, in solemn convention assembled, appealing to a candid world for 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.


http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/16818401.htm

Thus begins the Texas Declaration of Independence, adopted unanimously on this day 171 years ago.

Amen...and heading to Austin to say I HAVE NOT FORGOT!

Declaration of Independence
made by the
Delegates of the People of Texas
in General Convention
at the town of Washington
on the 2nd day of March 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 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 everready 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 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 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, 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 tyrrany, 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 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 defenseless 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 tyrranical government.

These, and other grievances, were patiently borne by the people of Texas, untill 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 the destruction of their liberty, and the substitution therfor 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.

Richard Ellis, President
of the Convention and Delegate
from Red River.
Charles B. Stewart
Tho. Barnett

John S. D. Byrom
Francis Ruis
J. Antonio Navarro
Jesse B. Badgett
Wm D. Lacy
William Menifee
Jn. Fisher
Matthew Caldwell
William Motley
Lorenzo de Zavala
Stephen H. Everett
George W. Smyth
Elijah Stapp
Claiborne West
Wm. B. Scates
M. B. Menard
A. B. Hardin
J. W. Burton
Thos. J. Gazley
R. M. Coleman
Sterling C. Robertson
James Collinsworth
Edwin Waller
Asa Brigham

Geo. C. Childress
Bailey Hardeman
Rob. Potter
Thomas Jefferson Rusk
Chas. S. Taylor
John S. Roberts
Robert Hamilton
Collin McKinney
Albert H. Latimer
James Power
Sam Houston
David Thomas
Edwd. Conrad
Martin Palmer
Edwin O. Legrand
Stephen W. Blount
Jms. Gaines
Wm. Clark, Jr.
Sydney O. Pennington
Wm. Carrol Crawford
Jno. Turner

Benj. Briggs Goodrich
G. W. Barnett
James G. Swisher
Jesse Grimes
S. Rhoads Fisher
John W. Moore
John W. Bower
Saml. A. Maverick (from Bejar)
Sam P. Carson
A. Briscoe
J. B. Woods
H. S. Kimble, Secretary

We The People. Does it still exist?

God Bless Texas!

Below are 189 men who were born in twenty different United States and seven different countries, who collectively fought at the cradle of Texas liberty, withheld troops numbering 5,000 to 6,000 for 13 days, and perished at the siege of Alamo, and are forever our heroes.

They are listed alphabetically by last name and following is their place of birth:

Abamillo, Juan...San Antonio, Texas, USA
Allen, R. ...Unknown
Andross, Miles DeForest...unknown
Autry, Micajah...North Carolina, USA, known descendent, Sara Greer
Badillo, Juan A....San Antonio, Texas, USA
Bailey, Peter James...Kentucky, USA
Baker, Isaac G....Arkansas, USA
Baker, William Charles M....Kentucky, USA
Ballentine, John J....unknown
Ballentine, Robert W....Scotland
Baugh, John J....Virginia, USA
Bayliss, Joseph...Tennessee, USA
Blair, John ...Tennessee, USA
Blair, Samuel B....Tennessee, USA
Blazeby, William...England
Bonham, James Butler...South Carolina, USA
Bourne, Daniel...England
Bowie, James...Tennessee, USA
Bowman, Jesse B....unknown
Brown, George...England
Brown, James...Pennsylvania, USA
Brown, Robert...unknown
Buchanan, James...Alabama, USA
Burns, Samuel E....Ireland
Butler, George D....Missouri, USA
Campbell, Robert ...Tennessee, USA
Cane, John...Pennsylvania, USA
Carey, William R....Maryland, USA
Clark, Charles Henry...Missouri, USA
Clark, M.B....unknown
Cloud, Daniel William...Kentucky, USA
Cochran, Robert E....New Jersey, USA
Cottle, George Washington...Tennessee, USA
Courtman, Henry ...Germany
Crawford, Lemuel...South Carolina, USA
Crockett, David...Tennessee, USA
Crossman , Robert...Massachusetts, USA
Cummings, David P....Pennsylvania, USA
Cunningham, Robert...New York, USA
Darst, Jacob C....Kentucky, USA
Davis, John...Kentucky, USA
Day, Freeman H.K....unknown
Day, Jerry C....Missouri, USA
Daymon, Squire...Tennessee, USA
Dearduff, William...Tennessee, USA
Dennison, Stephen...England
Despallier, Charles...Louisiana, USA
Dickinson, Almaron...Tennessee, USA
Dillard, John H....Tennessee, USA
Dimpkins, James R....Tennessee, USA
Duel, Lewis...New York, USA
Duvalt, Andrew ...Ireland
Espalier, Carlos...San Antonio, Texas, USA
Esparza, Gregorio...San Antonio, Texas, USA
Evans, Robert...Ireland
Evans, Samuel B....Kentucky, USA
Ewing, James I....Tennessee, USA
Fishbaugh, William...Alabama, USA
Flanders, John ...Massachusetts, USA
Floyd, Dolphin Ward...North Carolina, USA
Forsyth, John Hubbard...New York, USA
Fuentes, Antonio...San Antonio, Texas, USA
Fuqua, Galva ...Gonzales, Texas, USA
Furtleroy, William H....Kentucky, USA
Garnett, William...Tennessee, USA
Garrand, James W....Louisiana, USA
Garrett, James Girard...Tennessee, USA
Garvin, John E....unknown
Gaston, John E....Kentucky, USA
George, James ...unknown
Goodrich, John Calvin...Tennessee, USA
Grimes, Albert Calvin...Georgia, USA
Guerrero, Jose Maria...Laredo, Texas, USA
Gwynne, James C....England
Hannum, James...unknown
Harris, John...Kentucky, USA
Harrison, Andrew Jackson...unknown
Harrison, William B....Ohio, USA
Haskell, Charles M....Tennessee, USA
Hawkins, Joseph B....Ireland
Hays, John M....Tennessee, USA
Herndon, Patrick Henry...Virginia, USA
Hersee, William D....New York, USA
Holland, Tapley...unknown
Holloway, Samuel...Pennsylvania, USA
Howell, William D....Massachusetts, USA
Jackson, William Daniel...Ireland
Jackson, Thomas...Kentucky, USA
Jameson, Green B....Kentucky, USA
Jennings, Gordon C....Connecticut, USA
Johnson, Lewis...Wales
Johnson, William...Pennsylvania, USA
Jones, John...New York, USA
Kellog, Johnnie...unknown
Kenney, James...Virginia, USA
Kent, Andrew...Kentucky, USA
Kerr, Joseph...Louisiana, USA
Kimbell, George C....New York, USA
King, William P....unknown
Lewis, William Irvine...Virginia, USA
Lightfoot, William J....Virginia, USA
Lindley, Jonathan L. ...Illinois, USA
Linn, William...Massachusetts, USA
Losoya, Toribio D....San Antonio, Texas, USA
Main, George Washington...Virginia, USA
Malone, William T....Georgia, USA
Marshall, William T....Tennessee, USA
Martin, Albert...Tennessee, USA
McCafferty, Edward...unknown
McCoy, Jesse...unknown
McDowell, William...Pennsylvania, USA
McGee, James...Ireland
McGregor, John...Scotland
McKinney, Robert...Ireland
Melton, Eliel...Georgia, USA
Miller, Thomas R....Virginia, USA
Mills, William...Tennessee, USA
Millsaps, Isaac...Mississippi, USA
Mitchusson, Edward F....Virginia, USA
Mitchell, Edwin T....Georgia, USA
Mitchell, Napoleon B....unknown
Moore, Robert B....Virginia, USA
Moore, Willis...Mississippi, USA
Musselman, Robert...Ohio, USA
Nava, Andres...San Antonio, Texas, USA
Neggan, George...South Carolina, USA
Nelson, Andrew M....Tennessee, USA
Nelson, Edward...South Carolina, USA
Nelson, George...South Carolina, USA
Northcross, James...Virginia, USA
Nowlan, James...Ireland
Pagan, George...Mississippi, USA
Parker, Christopher...Mississippi, USA
Parks, William...unknown
Perry, Richardson...Texas, USA
Pollard, Amos...Massachusetts, USA
Reynolds, John Purdy...Pennsylvania, USA
Roberts, Thomas H....unknown
Robinson, Isaac...Scotland
Robertson, James...Tennessee, USA
Rose, James M....Virginia, USA
Rusk, Jackson J....Ireland
Rutherford, Joseph...Kentucky, USA
Ryan, Isaac...Louisiana, USA
Scurlock, Mial...North Carolina, USA
Sewell, Marcus L....England
Shield, Manson...Georgia, USA
Simmons, Cleveland Kinlock...South Carolina, USA
Smith, Andrew H....Tennessee, USA
Smith, Charles S....Maryland, USA
Smith, Joshua G....North Carolina, USA
Smith, William H....unknown
Starr, Richard...England
Stewart, James E....England
Stockton, Richard L....Virginia, USA
Summerlin, A. Spain...Tennessee, USA
Summers, William E....Tennessee, USA
Sutherland, William D. ...Alabama, USA
Taylor, Edward...unknown
Taylor, George...unknown
Taylor, James...unknown
Taylor, William...Tennessee, USA
Thomas, B. Archer M....Kentucky, USA
Thomas, Henry ...Germany
Thompson, Jesse G....Arkansas, USA
Thompson, John W....North Carolina, USA
Thruston, John M....Pennsylvania, USA
Trammel, Burke...Ireland
Travis, William Barret...South Carolina, USA
Tumlinson, George W. ...Missouri, USA
Tylee, James...New York, USA
Unknown, John (Negro)...unknown
Walker, Asa...unknown
Walker, Jacob...unknown
Ward, William B....Ireland
Warnell, Henry...Arkansas, USA
Washington, Joseph G....Tennessee, USA
Waters, Thomas...England
Wells, William...Georgia, USA
White, Isaac...Kentucky, USA
White, Robert...unknown
Williamson, Hiram J....Pennsylvania, USA
Wills, William...unknown
Wilson, David L....Scotland
Wilson, John ...Pennsylvania, USA
Wolfe, Anthony...England
Wright, Claiborne...North Carolina, USA
Zanco, Charles...Denmark

Thanks for the info all.