Skip to main content
search

The Texas Declaration of Independence (1836)

Historical Context

The Texas Declaration of Independence, adopted at Washington‑on‑the‑Brazos on March 2, 1836, formally severed ties with Mexico and proclaimed the creation of a sovereign Republic of Texas. The document drew heavily on the philosophical language of the United States Declaration of Independence, asserting the right of revolution in response to governmental tyranny. It accused the Mexican government under General Antonio López de Santa Anna of centralizing power, dismantling the federalist Constitution of 1824, and violating the political and civil rights of the Anglo-American settlers who had been encouraged to colonize Texas under earlier Mexican law.

Though adopted in the midst of military crisis—just days before the fall of the Alamo—it marked the birth of Texas as an independent republic. Within days, the same convention adopted the Republic’s constitution, establishing a new government that would last until Texas’ annexation by the United States a decade later.

The declaration was signed by sixty men. Most of the signatories were U.S.-born Anglo settlers, while three were Hispanics—two native-born Texans (José  Antonio  Navarro and José  Francisco  Ruiz) and one, future vice president Lorenzo de Zavala, who was born elsewhere in Mexico. This composition reflected the decade-long influx of Anglos into Mexican Texas, alongside an enduring Tejano political presence. Although outnumbered, the participation of these prominent Hispanic figures underscored that resistance to Santa Anna’s centralization was a shared concern, uniting diverse communities in support of independence.

Texans adopted the declaration only after months of debate over whether to declare independence or support the Federalist faction within Mexico. According to historian James K. Greer, “The winter of 1835-’36 saw public opinion in Texas crystallize toward the belief that the time had arrived for Texas to sever its relation with the Mexican government. Hope that the Mexican Liberals would assist the Texans in a future safeguarding of their rights had dwindled; a declaration on November 7, 1835, in favor of the Mexican constitution of 1824 had repelled Americans and failed to secure support from Mexico.”

“Even Stephen F. Austin, the colonist most loyal to the Mexican government in Texas, who had said in November, 1835, that Texas had ‘legal and equitable and just grounds to declare independence,’ but continued to insist on strict adherence to the Mexican Federal Union during the same period, finally said that he was now in favor of an immediate declaration of independence. Having arrived at this conclusion, Austin now threw all his influence (and it was of great weight with the people as a whole) to securing unity of the people in favor of a declaration of separation from the Mexican government.”1

On February 1, 1836 an election of delegates to the convention was held in the various municipalities of Texas. They assembled on March 1, 1836 and appointed a committee to draft a Declaration of Independence, consisting of George Childress of Milam, James Gaines of Sabine, Edwin Conrad of Refugio, Collin McKinney of Red River, and Bailey Hardeman of Matagorda.

Childress, a Nashville-trained lawyer and former newspaper editor, who had only recently arrived in Texas, is widely recognized as the principal author of the declaration. The drafting committee completed its work in a single day—strong evidence that Childress arrived at the convention with a draft already in hand. A newspaper memorial for his brother Wyatt even recounts that Childress composed the original draft in his brother’s blacksmith shop, lending a vivid, frontier-era detail to the declaration’s origins.

Full Text of the Texas Declaration of Independence

The Unanimous Declaration of Independence made by the Delegates of the People of Texas in General Convention at the town of Washington [Texas] 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

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
Sam P. Carson
A. Briscoe
J. B. Woods

H. S. Kimble, Secretary

Note: Headings added for readability. The original document was written as a continuous statement without formal sections.

  1. James K. Greer, “The Committee on the Texas Declaration of Independence,” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly 30, no. 4 (April 1927): 239–40. ↩︎

This article is part of Texapedia’s curated primary source collection, which makes accessible both famous and forgotten historical records. Each source is presented with historical context and manuscript information. This collection is freely available for classroom use, research, and general public interest.

📚 Curated Texas History Books

Dive deeper into this topic by purchasing any of these handpicked titles:

As an Amazon Associate, Texapedia earns a commission from qualifying purchases. Earnings are used to support the ongoing work of maintaining and growing this encyclopedia.

Tags:

Support fact-based history without an ideological ax to grind.

Give