Page:Texas Declaration of Causes of Secession.djvu/2





The Government of the United States, by certain Joint Resolutions, bearing date on the first 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 twenty-ninth day of December, of the same year, said State was formally received 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 tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of liberty and peace to her people. She was received into the confederacy, with her own constitution, under the guarantees of the Federal Constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery—the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits—a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should continue to exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position