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Texas Independence Day

March 2, 2012 by · Comments Off on Texas Independence Day 

Texas Independence Day, Today is Texas Independence Day, but it ain’t no Fourth of July.

Compared with that firework-popping, band-playing, neighborhood parade-laden extravaganza, the date marking the birth of the Republic of Texas is eerily quiet.

McMurry University history professor Don Frazier, though, said that shouldn’t necessarily be so.

“The Texas revolution was a major American event,” he said. “Texas is the central player in the development of the nation in the 19th century. Certainly, it’s not a Fourth of July, but it is a watershed event that sets a lot of other things into motion, and I think if nothing else it should be remembered for that.”

But McMurry historian Stephen Hardin notes in his essay, “March 2, 1836: The Myth and Meaning of Texas

Independence,” that it’s little wonder the date, “sandwiched between the defeat at the Alamo and the victory at San Jacinto,” two of Texas’ most defining moments, often gets “lost in the glare.”

What Hardin called “myth and misunderstanding” obscure the event from start to finish beginning with the date itself.

“Many believe, for example, that the delegates signed the Texas Declaration on March 2. Not true,” he wrote. The delegates read and approved the document that day in 1836, he said. But clerks worked through the night to produce five handwritten copies of the declaration, which were not ready for signatures until March 3.

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