Republic of Texas Traditional Geocache
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Cache is a camoed pill bottle hidden on the 175th Anniversary of
Texas' Independence from Mexico. Should be an easy park & grab
in a rest area on the West bound side of I-10.
The Texas Declaration of Independence (March 2, 1836)
The Texas Declaration of Independence was produced, literally,
overnight. Its urgency was paramount, because while it was being
prepared, the Alamo in San Antonio was under seige by Santa Anna's
army of Mexico.
Immediately upon the assemblage of the Convention of 1836 on March
1, a committee of five of its delegates were appointed to draft the
document. The committee, consisting of George C. Childress, Edward
Conrad, James Gaines, Bailey Hardeman, and Collin McKinney,
prepared the declaration in record time. It was briefly reviewed,
then adopted by the delegates of the convention the following
day.
As seen from the transcription below, the document parallels
somewhat that of the United States, signed almost sixty years
earlier. It contains statements on the function and responsibility
of government, followed by a list of grievances. Finally, it
concludes by declaring Texas a free and independent republic.
The full text of the document is as follows:
The Unanimous 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.
Signers of the Texas Decl. of Ind.
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 Parmer
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
This cache was placed by a member of the PBCA:
Permian Basin Cachers Association
Caching like Crazy, simply because we can!
Additional Hints
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