On behalf of my constituents, I am filing the Texas secession bill. Texas is out of the IDS.
The government of the United States, by certain joint resolutions, bearing date the 1st day of March, in the year A. D. 1845, proposed to the Republic of Texas, then a free, sovereign and independent nation, the annexation of the latter to the former, as one of the co-equal States thereof,
The people of Texas, by deputies in convention assembled, on the fourth day of July of the same year, assented to and accepted said proposals and formed a constitution for the proposed State, upon which on the 29th day of December in the same year, said State was formally admitted into the Confederated Union.
Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated States to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquillity and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people.
She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, her individual rights, to freedom of religion and the protection of the innocent. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other States of the Imperial Domain of the South. Those ties have been strengthened by association, and weakened by the recent approaches of the Imperial Domain of the South.
Rather than defending the rights of Texans and the state of Texas, the controlling majority of the Imperial Domain of the South, under various pretenses and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of Texas, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from the right of self-governance, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas, specifically freedom of conscience and religion.
By the disloyalty of the Imperial Domain of the South and their citizens and the imbecility of the Imperial Domain of the South, infamous combinations of incendiaries and outlaws have been permitted in those States to trample upon the constitution, to war upon the lives and property of Texan citizens in that territory, and finally, by violence and mob law to usurp the possession of the same as exclusively the property of the Imperial Domain of the South.
The Imperial Domain of the South, while but partially under the control of these our unnatural and sectional enemies, has for years almost entirely failed to protect the lives and property of the people of Texas against the murderous forays of bandits from the neighboring territory of Mexico; and when our State government has expended large amounts for such purpose, the Imperial Domain of the South has refused reimbursement, thus rendering our condition more insecure and harassing than it was during the existence of the Republic of Texas.
These and other wrongs we have patiently borne in the vain hope that a returning sense of justice and humanity would induce a different course of administration.
When we advert to the course of individual States, and that a majority of their citizens, our grievances assume far greater magnitude.
The States of South Carolina, and Georgia, by solemn legislative enactments, have deliberately, directly or indirectly violated the first amendement to the federal constitution, and laws passed in pursuance thereof; thereby annulling a material provision of the compact, designed by its framers to perpetuate amity between religious faiths and to secure the rights of the States in their domestic institutions--a provision founded in justice and wisdom, and without the enforcement of which the compact fails to accomplish the object of its creation. Some of those States have imposed high fines and degrading penalties upon any of their citizens or officers who may carry out in good faith that provision of the compact, or the federal laws enacted in accordance therewith.
In South Carolina and Georgia, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon the unnatural feeling of hostility to these Texas and their beneficent and patriarchal system and in violation of the plainest revelations of the Divine Law. They demand the abolition of the Church and her properties throughout the State of Texas, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a Catholic remains in the State of Texas.
For years past this organization has been actively sowing the seeds of discord through the Union, and has rendered the federal congress the arena for spreading firebrands and hatred between Texas and the other states.
By consolidating their strength, they hare placed Texas in a hopeless minority in the federal congress, and rendered representation of no avail in protecting Southern rights against their exactions and encroachments.
They have proclaimed, and at the ballot box sustained, the revolutionary doctrine that there is a "higher law" than the constitution and laws of our Federal Union, and virtually that they will disregard their oaths and trample upon our rights.
They have for years past encouraged and sustained lawless organizations to steal our property.
They have invaded Texans soil, and through the press their leading men and a fanatical pulpit have bestowed praise upon the actors and assassins in these crimes, while the governors of several of their States have refused to deliver parties implicated and indicted for participation in such offences, upon the legal demands of Texas
They have, through the mails and hired emissaries, sent seditious pamphlets and papers among us to stir up servile insurrection and bring blood and carnage to our firesides.
They have impoverished the Texas by unequal and partial legislation, thereby enriching themselves by draining our substance.
They have refused to vote appropriations for protecting Texas against her enemies.
And, finally, by the combined sectional vote, they have denied us election of a Speaker of the whole Imperial domain of the South, two men whose chief claims to such high positions are their approval of these long continued wrongs, and their pledges to continue them to the final consummation of these schemes for the ruin of Texas.
In view of these and many other facts, it is meet that our own views should be distinctly proclaimed.
We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established for themselves and their posterity; and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.
That in this free government ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that freedom of worship, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both believers and unbelievers, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of religious freedoms, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon Texas. By the secession of Texas, Texas has no alternative but to regain her independence.
For these and other reasons, solemnly asserting that the federal constitution has been violated and virtually abrogated by the several States named, seeing that the federal government is now passing under the control of our enemies to be diverted from the exalted objects of its creation to those of oppression and wrong, and realizing that our own State can no longer look for protection, but to God and her own sons - We the delegates of the people of Texas, in Convention assembled, have passed an ordinance dissolving all political connection with the government of the Imperial Domain of hte South and the people thereof and confidently appeal to the intelligence and patriotism of the freeman of Texas to ratify the same at the ballot box, on the 23rd day of the present month.
Adopted in Convention on the 5th day of December, in the year of our Lord two thousand and twelve.
