Racism!

It is even suspected by some that Col. Peraza himself was in fact the agent of Santa Ana, instead of Yucatan. Should this suspicion turn out to be well founded (and I believe that servile and faithless people capable of the basest acts of national perfidy as well as of individual treachery), we will present to the world the unenviable and humiliating spectacle of a nation of anglo-Americans, gulled, entrapped, circumvented, and in her vital interests crippled by the perfidy of the imbecile Mexican.

--Congressman Darnell of the Republic of Texas, on the floor of the Texian House of Representatives, 14 December 1841

The splendor of democracy

A nugget from the proceedings of the Third Congress of the Republic of Texas.

[Senator] Barnet submitted the following resolution, viz.: That the seat of the member from Harrisburg county [Robert Wilson] be vacated. Mr Barnet stated the ground upon which the report had been made.

1. The repeated clamorous oaths made by the Senator from Harrisburg and invoking high Heaven to strike dead in their tracks all those who voted against him on the bill under consideration of the Senate on Monday.
2. His peremptory refusal to come to order, saying he would be God damned if he would come to order.
3. His refusing to seat himself or be seated by the Sergeant-at-arms; and ordered the Sergeant-at-arms to stand off, and not touch him, swearing that no power but God's could seat him.
4. Disclosing secrecy, contrary to the meaning and intention of the 17th section of the constitution.

Even at the beginning, Texas was Texas.