…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.And with those words, the people of the Republic of Texas declared independence from Mexico on this day, March 2, 1836. The Texas War of Independence had begun half a year earlier, on October 5, 1835, with the defeat of the Mexican army at the Battle of Gonzales by armed Texians who refused to surrender a cannon — the famous “Come and Take It” cannon — to the Mexican government, as it was their only means of protection against Indian attacks on the settlement. General Antonio López de Santa Anna, the recently-elected president of Mexico, had just the year before abolished the Constitution of 1824 — which very loosely governed Mexican territories, including Texas — and enacted a harsh, anti-federalist constitution in its place. The new constitution took away liberties to which most Texian settlers had become accustomed, required that they convert to Catholicism, tithe 10% of their earnings to the Roman Catholic church and created the state of Coahuila y Tejas out of the former territory, with its new capital hundreds of miles away from the former capital of San Antonio. Texian settlers were furious.
