Posted on 06/26/2006 10:42:44 AM PDT by A. Pole
TEXAS DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. The Texas Declaration of Independence was framed and issued by the Convention of 1836 at Washington-on-the-Brazos. As soon as the convention was organized a resolution was introduced for appointment of a committee to draw up a declaration of independence. Richard Ellis, president of the convention, appointed George C. Childress, James Gaines, Edward Conrad, Collin McKinney, and Bailey Hardemanqv to the committee. Childress was named chairman, and it is generally conceded that he wrote the instrument with little help from the other members. In fact there is some evidence that he brought to the convention a proposed declaration that was adopted with little change by the committee and the convention, a view which is substantiated by the fact that the committee was appointed on March 1 and the declaration was presented to the convention on March 2.
The Texas edict, like the United States Declaration of Independence, contains a statement on the nature of government, a list of grievances, and a final declaration of independence. The separation from Mexico was justified by a brief philosophical argument and by a list of grievances submitted to an impartial world. The declaration charged that the government of Mexico had ceased to protect the lives, liberty, and property of the people; that it had been changed from a restricted federal republic to a consolidated, central, military despotism; that the people of Texas had remonstrated against the misdeeds of the government only to have their agents thrown into dungeons and armies sent forth to enforce the decrees of the new government at the point of the bayonet; that the welfare of Texas had been sacrificed to that of Coahuila; that the government had failed to provide a system of public education, trial by jury, freedom of religion, and other essentials of good government; and that the Indians had been incited to massacre the settlers.
According to the declaration, the Mexican government had invaded Texas to lay waste territory and had a large mercenary army advancing to carry on a war of extermination. The final grievance listed in justification of revolution charged that the Mexican government had been "the contemptible sport and victim of successive military revolutions and hath continually exhibited every characteristic of a weak, corrupt, and tyrannical government."
After the signing of the original declaration by fifty-nine delegates, five copies of the document were dispatched to the designated Texas towns of Bexar, Goliad, Nacogdoches, Brazoria, and San Felipe. The printer at San Felipe was also instructed to make 1,000 copies in handbill form. The original was deposited with the United States Department of State in Washington, D.C., and was not returned to Texas until some time after June 1896. In 1929 the original document was transferred from the office of the secretary of state to the Board of Controlqv to be displayed in a niche at the Capitol,qv where it was unveiled on March 2, 1930.
Bibliography: James K. Greer, "The Committee on the Texas Declaration of Independence," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 30, 31 (April, July 1927). Louis Wiltz Kemp, The Signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence (Salado, Texas: Anson Jones, 1944; rpt. 1959). . Ralph W. Steen
Santa Anna was a dictator who persecuted by execution and other means everyone who opposed him. His army had no true loyalty to him.
By the way, he was defeated by a numerically inferior force of gringo Texans and native Hispanic Mexicans. He was caught dressed up in women's clothing trying to escape. He was crying and begging to be let go. To save his worthless life he gave up Texas.
Santa Anna's stated aim was to eliminate the gringo Texans. They previously only wanted to be loyal citizens of Mexico. That is why he ended up killing everyone at the Alamo. Look up the massacre at Goliad if you want to know how dishonorable Santa Anna really was.
Mexico only let the gringo Texans into Texas in the first place because of Mexico's rascist policies. The Mexican government of the time figured the Apaches and the gringo Texans would kill themselves off. That in their minds would kill off two problems.
I suggest you read up on the nature of slavery in Biblical times vs. the chattel slavery of the 18th and 19th centuries. They have very little in common. For example, in the latter, slaves were treated as property, subhuman brutes to be abused or killed at will, which is forbidden in the Bible. There are other important differences, too.
Free markets stopped slavery.
Secularism makes it possible for many religions to live together without killing each other.
I know you seen that as a bad thing. But it is preferable to your socialist theocracy.
What?
Where is there slavery in Poland?
A. Pole, your posts are usually very good, but you have to explain this one! Slavery in Poland? Really!
Where?
And they have heard wrong.
Current Muslim growth rate is 1.76% a year worldwide. Christianity is growing at the rate of 3.2% a year worldwide. This includes born additions and converts.
No, the French did it too. This created a problem for Thomas Jefferson when he took his slaves with him to Paris.
I'm not certain whether the French did it before or after the British, though.
It was a joke.
edcoil wrote:
"The USA and England are I believe, are the only two countries that have outlawed slavery in 5,000 years."
So it must be that the slavery still exists in Poland :)
"and hath continually exhibited every characteristic of a weak, corrupt, and tyrannical government."
So, except for reduction in revolutions, nothing has changed in Mexico!
Back in the 1100s or so, manumission of slaves was a precondition for Scandinavian converts to Christianity. Surprisingly, it wasn't much of a disincentive.
Someone's about to get a whole lot of crap from Texans for as long as this thread is visible.
The Revolutionary authorities in France outlawed it before the British, in 1794 IIRC. Part of the motivation was purely mercenary, in that the French feared losing Haiti due to the slave uprising there, but part of it was due to the power and ideological tilt of the Jacobins. Napoleon sent an army in 1802 that tried to re-establish slavery but it was defeated.
Why do you say that? I AM Texan.
But wasn't slavery already illegal in France proper (but not the colonies) earlier? I remember reading that some of the slave-owning American diplomats who stayed in France during the revolution lost their slaves because it was illegal on French soil. But maybe my memory is failing me.
http://www.blackhistoricalmuseum.com/chronology.htm
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