(March 2, 1836):
UNANIMOUS
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
by the
Delegates of the People of Texas
in General Convention
at the Town of Washington.
On the Second 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 their inestimable and inalienable rights, becomes an instrument in the hands of evil rulers for their oppression. …
In such a crisis … the inherent and inalienable right 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 welfare and happiness. …
The late changes made in the government by General Antonio Lopez Santa Ana, who having overturned the constitution of his country, now offers, as the cruel alternative, either 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 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, through its emissaries, incited the merciless savage, with the tomahawk and scalping knife, to massacre the inhabitants of our defenseless frontiers. …
We, therefore, the delegates, with plenary powers, of the people of Texas … 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 …
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.2740
Venable, William Henry (April 29, 1836–July 6, 1920), in Johnny Appleseed, st. 25, wrote:
Remember Johnny Appleseed,
All ye who love the apple;
He served his kind by word and deed,
In God’s grand greenwood chapel.2741