this territory.  In the year 1824 Mexico established a federal constitution, under which the Mexican Republic was composed of a number of sovereign States confederated together in a federal union similar to our own.  Each of these States had its own executive, legislature, and judiciary, and for all except federal purposes was as independent of the General Government and that of the other States as is Pennsylvania or Virginia under our Constitution.  Texas and Coahuila united and formed one of these Mexican States.  The State constitution which they adopted, and which was approved by the Mexican Confederacy, asserted that they were “free and independent of the other Mexican United States and of every other power and dominion whatsoever,” and proclaimed the great principle of human liberty that “the sovereignty of the state resides originally and essentially in the general mass of the individuals who compose it.”  To the Government under this constitution, as well as to that under the federal constitution, the people of Texas owed allegiance.

Emigrants from foreign countries, including the United States, were invited by the colonization laws of the State and of the Federal Government to settle in Texas.  Advantageous terms were offered to induce them to leave their own country and become Mexican citizens.  This invitation was accepted by many of our citizens in the full faith that in their new home they would be governed by laws enacted by representatives elected by themselves, and that their lives, liberty, and property would be protected by constitutional guaranties similar to those which existed in the Republic they had left.  Under a Government thus organized they continued until the year 1835, when a military revolution broke out in the City of Mexico which entirely subverted the federal and State constitutions and placed a military dictator at the head of the Government.  By a sweeping decree of a Congress subservient to the will of the Dictator the several State constitutions were abolished and the States themselves converted into mere departments of the central Government.  The people of Texas were unwilling to submit to this usurpation.  Resistance to such tyranny became a high duty.  Texas was fully absolved from all allegiance to the central Government of Mexico from the moment that Government had abolished her State constitution and in its place substituted an arbitrary and despotic central government.  Such were the principal causes of the Texan revolution.  The people of Texas at once determined upon resistance and flew to arms.  In the midst of these important and exciting events, however, they did not omit to place their liberties upon a secure and permanent foundation.  They elected members to a convention, who in the month of March, 1836, issued a formal declaration that their “political connection with the Mexican nation has forever ended, and that the people of Texas do now constitute a free, sovereign, and independent