Texas Declares Independence!

[Pericles]

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.

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. https://www.tsl.texas.gov/treasures/republic/odeclar-01.html

[William Tell]

I posted my thread one minute before you! :p

[Ronin Truth]

Vermont Declaration of Independence

A Declaration of Independence by the People of the Sovereign State of Vermont

“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and mankind entitle them,” let them declare “the causes which impel them to the separation.”

“We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable; that all men are created equal and independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations” evinces a design to compromise their sovereignty and to mandate their complicity in the building of empire, in oppression and exploitation throughout the world, and in the suppression of the rights of individuals, societies, tribes and nations, “it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future.”

Let the reasons for Vermont independence be submitted openly before the world.

Vermont is small, rural, democratic, peaceful, communitarian, egalitarian, and independent. Vermont has suffered, as have other states, from the debilitating effects of big business, big government, and big agriculture. Its people have seen big markets deliver inferior goods and produce. They have been burdened with technology that is inappropriate to their needs.

Since Vermont became the fourteenth state of the Union, the United States government has become too big, too centralized, too powerful, too intrusive, too materialistic, too impersonal, too grasping, too militarized, too imperialistic, too violent, too undemocratic, too corrupt, and too unresponsive to the needs of individual citizens and small communities. National and Congressional elections are sold to the highest bidder. State and local governments assume too little responsibility for the well-being of their citizens – too often abdicating their responsibilities to Washington.

The free people of Vermont have reached a turning point: whether to fight for “liberty and justice” or to trade in their heritage for the shackles known as progress. It is not progress. It is comfort. It is an illusion.

We, the people, here assembled choose “liberty and justice,” and we reject a system of intrusive federal control that is antithetical to a prosperous way of life, and to the well being of a sovereign state.

Fundamental to liberty, statehood and citizenship is the right to self-preservation. This right includes the obligation of each sovereign state to protect is citizens from the oppressive, harmful, or unlawful policies of the federal government. To wit:

First, the United States is no longer a sustainable nation-state: not politically, economically, agriculturally, socially, morally, culturally, nor environmentally.

Second, Vermont has been dragged into the quagmire of affluenza, technomania, megalomania, globalization, and imperialism by the U.S. government in collaboration with corporate America.

Third, the U.S. government provides Vermont with little protection from the ills of globalization including economic uncertainly, unemployment, environmental degradation, and the loss of sovereignty, political will, and cultural identity.

Fourth, the federal government is using its “war on terrorism” to undermine constitutionally guaranteed liberties.

Fifth, the U.S. government’s unprovoked, unilateral, pre-emptive attacks on nations with which it disagrees such as Afghanistan, Grenada, Guatemala, Iraq, Nicaragua, Panama and Serbia are unconstitutional and in violation of the U.N. charter and international law.

Sixth, Vermont has no military bases, no strategic resources, few defense contractors, and no big cities, and is a threat to no one. However, as long as it remains in the Union it runs the risk of attack, it must accept the military conscription of its youth, and it remains complicit in the most egregious violations of international law.

There is a moral, legal, and absolute imperative for an independent-minded Vermont to revert back to its rightful status as the independent republic it was between 1777 and 1791. This is a call for Vermont to reclaim its soul, and, in so doing, provide an alternative to a nation obsessed with money, power, size, speed and greed. It is a call to reject the fear of terrorism. Let us secure our future with the skills and strengths of our past, our ingenuity and our self reliance.

Our founders Thomas Jefferson and James Madison held that the U.S. Constitution was a compact of sovereign states which had delegated specific powers, but not sovereignty, to a central government – powers which could be recalled. By international law, sovereignty cannot be surrendered by implication. It is surrendered only by an express act, and nowhere in the U.S. Constitution is there any express renunciation of sovereignty by the states. Each state was conceived and formed as sovereign, and, sovereign, each state remains.

According to the tenth amendment of the U.S. Constitution, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” That which is not expressly prohibited by the Constitution is, therefore, within the legal province of the individual states. And therefore all states have a constitutional right to leave the Union. Indeed, when the federal government usurps their sovereignty and becomes destructive to “the preservation of life, and liberty and the pursuit or happiness,” they have a constitutional duty to reclaim the independence in which they were formed.

Therefore, we the sovereign people of the state of Vermont, while affirming our allegiance to the principles expressed in the U.S. Constitution, do hereby declare our independence from the United States of America, and call upon the Vermont Legislature to authorize a convention of the people to vote on rescinding the petition for statehood approved by the Vermont Assembly in January 1791 and ratified by the Congress on March 4, 1791.

James R. Hogue, Thomas Naylor and, posthumously, Thomas Jefferson.

James R. Hogue, September 7, 2003




http://vermontrepublic.org/vermont-declaration-of-independence/

[DamianTV]

I think another Independence Day is sorely needed...