Deconstructing the Declaration

James L. Haley

The crucial document of Texas nationality, its Declaration of Independence, is both less and more than it seems.

In arguing the justice of their cause to the world and to history, the 59 men who signed the instrument came to that moment from a variety of backgrounds and motivations. There were Tejanos who believed they had seen the liberties won in the Mexican Revolution and the Constitution of 1824 subverted by the dictatorship of Santa Anna. Chosen Vice-President of the Republic was a Yucatecan legislator who had sought refuge in the one Mexican province (Texas) that still resisted Santa Anna’s armies. There were Anglo-American colonists who believed that the deal they had struck with the legitimate Mexican government had been betrayed by the destruction of the democratic process. And there were American latecomers, some of whom simply sought to make new lives for themselves, and others who wanted to protect the fortunes they had invested in land speculation.

By March 1836, it was apparent to all Texans that their hope of success hinged on receiving aid from the United States, and the delegates used the American Declaration of Independence as their model, beginning with a preamble, moving to a lengthy list of causes and concluding with the effective declaration. Of the litany of offenses enumerated against the Mexican government, some charges were true, some were artfully stretched, and some contained more propaganda than fact.

“It has denied us the right of worshipping the Almighty according to the dictates of our own consciences.”

That was technically true, and latecomers who had no right to land anyway may have found this offensive, but legitimate settlers were aware that Catholicism was a condition of landholding at the time they emigrated. While the requirement of Catholicism was seldom if ever enforced, one might also argue that sanctioning a state religion was an offense against natural rights whose time had come.

“It has demanded us to deliver up our arms; which are essential to our defense.”

That was true in the specific instance of the Gonzales cannon, which was of dubious defense value anyway. While no general effort had been made to disarm the population, persons now taken under arms were liable to summary execution.

“It has sacrificed our welfare to the state of Coahuila.”

In truth the concessions granted by Santa Anna the previous year went a long way to improve Texas’ footing as the junior partner in the dual state, improving the judiciary and giving Anglo immigrants the right to enter business. Moreover, Coahuila’s hostility to Santa Anna had cost the state government its very existence, and that was a legislature by whom many leading Texas Anglos had done very well indeed in the land speculating business.

“It has made piratical attacks upon our commerce.”

The imposition of port duties both in 1832 and 1835 had in fact been done with legal authority, although clumsily and in some instances corruptly. And again, the reforms of 1834 improved the Anglos’ commercial rights.

“It has suffered the military commandants stationed among us to exercise arbitrary acts of oppression, thus . . . rendering the military superior to the civil power.”

That was true enough, and the Texans had the examples of the other Mexican states in rebellion against Santa Anna to know how ruthless a Mexican occupation could be.

“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.”

Stephen F. Austin was not mentioned by name, but Childress acknowledged that he felt the hardships that Austin bore and the respect he deserved merited special mention. Austin’s imprisonment was so unjust that no Mexican court would take jurisdiction over the case.

“It has invaded our country, both by sea and 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.”

Use of the term “our country” was specious since there was no country recognized by anyone else, and alleging the employment of a “mercenary army,” with its vague allusion to the Hessians used against the American colonies, may have been calculated to gain sympathy from home. But Santa Anna employed no foreign mercenaries. Able foreigners did serve in his officer corps, but the same could be said of the American Revolution. Santa Anna, however, had certainly invaded, and certainly he intended to sweep the Anglo colonies from the map, in a campaign that in the following century would have been identified as “ethnic cleansing.”

“[The Mexican government] has 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.”

Here lies the real issue of the Texas revolution’s legitimacy: whether Santa Anna’s seizure of power and formal annulment of the Constitution of 1824 ended the obligation of fealty on the part of Mexico’s federal components. Other states thought that it did and had been crushed for their impertinence. Texas’ parent government, the state legislature of Coahuila y Tejas, was broken up by troops of Santa Anna’s reactionary regime, and prominent Mexican federalists—de Zavala was only one—were fleeing through Texas, angry and fearful and desperate to bring the dictator down. With the rest of Mexico prostrate, Texas stood alone against him.

“We are, therefore, forced to the melancholy conclusion that the Mexican people have acquiesced in 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 out 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 . . ..”