Texans Declared Themselves Released From the Mexican Union 191 Years Ago This Week

On November 7, 1835, delegates meeting at San Felipe de Austin declared that “Texas is no longer morally or civilly bound by the Compact of Union.” The body was the Consultation, the assembly Texans had called to decide what to do about Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna’s government, and the document it adopted that Saturday was the Declaration of the People of Texas in General Convention Assembled. The Handbook of Texas calls it “a declaration of causes for taking up arms against Mexico preliminary to the Texas Declaration of Independence.”

The case it made was a contract argument. Santa Anna and “other military chieftains,” the preamble says, had “by force of arms, overthrown the Federal Institutions of Mexico, and dissolved the social compact which existed between Texas and the other members of the Mexican Confederacy.” The Constitution of 1824 had made Texas part of a federal republic. With that constitution overthrown, the delegates held that the bargain was void, and they said so in eight numbered articles.

The first said Texans had “taken up arms in defence of their rights and liberties.” The third refused to acknowledge “that the present authorities of the nominal Mexican Republic have the right to govern within the limits of Texas.” The fifth claimed the right “to withdraw from the Union, to establish an independant government, or to adopt such measures as they may deem best calculated to protect their rights and liberties.” The eighth promised land and citizenship to everyone who volunteered for the fight.

The document still stopped short of independence. It pledged that Texas would stay “faithful to the Mexican government, so long as that nation is governed by the Constitution and laws that were formed for the government of the Political Association.” The same day, the Consultation voted 33 to 14 for “a provisional government upon the principles of the Constitution of 1824,” according to the Handbook of Texas. The declaration was written to convince Mexico’s federalists that Texans wanted only to preserve the Constitution of 1824, the Handbook says, and Branch T. Archer, who presided, favored independence but voted with the majority.

A committee of 12 under John A. Wharton wrote the declaration, working from drafts by Daniel Parker, Don Carlos Barrett, Robert M. Williamson and Stephen F. Austin. The delegates adopted it unanimously and ordered 1,000 copies printed. Lorenzo de Zavala helped draft it and translated it into Spanish, according to the Texas State Library and Archives Commission, which holds a Spanish broadside of it today. Before the Consultation adjourned on November 14, it chose Henry Smith as provisional governor and elected Sam Houston commander of the army.

The compromise did not hold. On December 20, 1835, Texans at Goliad declared that Texas ought to be “a free, sovereign, and independent State,” and on March 2, 1836, the convention at Washington-on-the-Brazos declared independence outright. Within four months, Texans had acted on the right the Consultation reserved at San Felipe.

The men at San Felipe put their reasoning in writing before they had decided what to do with it. Their reasoning was that when the other party to a compact destroys its terms, the people bound by it are released, and the choice of what comes next belongs to them.