The Convention of 1836 opened at Washington-on-the-Brazos on March 1, with 44 delegates present that day and 59 in all. On March 2 they adopted the Texas Declaration of Independence, which George C. Childress is generally credited with writing. Its complaints are specific: Texas had been sacrificed to Coahuila, it says, and denied trial by jury and any public system of education. Texans were refused freedom of worship and left under military commandants who committed arbitrary acts of oppression, and Mexico had incited Native attacks on the frontier. Slavery is not among them. Historians call it an underlying cause rather than an immediate one. Texans feared Mexico would free the enslaved. The 1827 state constitution had banned further imports and freed children born to enslaved parents, and settlers answered with indenture contracts that bound people for life. President Vicente Guerrero decreed abolition in 1829 and exempted Texas within months. In 1836 about 5,000 of Texas's estimated 38,470 people were enslaved.
Section 9
The delegates then wrote a constitution. The first draft would have barred emancipation by law or by deed except in extraordinary cases with legislative approval. The text adopted on March 16 put the matter in Section 9 of the General Provisions. People held as slaves for life before they came to Texas stayed enslaved. Congress could not stop emigrants from the United States from bringing enslaved people in, and could not emancipate anyone. An owner could free a person only with Congress's consent or by taking that person out of the Republic. Free people of African descent, in whole or in part, could not live permanently in Texas without Congress's consent. Importing Africans was banned as piracy; imports from the United States were not. Section 10 excepted Africans, their descendants and Indians from citizenship.
The consent clause
The enslaved population grew to at least 30,000 by the end of 1845 and 58,161, or 27.4 percent of Texans, in the 1850 census. Thousands of enslaved people fled toward Mexico over the years. A joint resolution of June 5, 1837, let free Black Texans who lived in the country before the Declaration stay. A law of February 5, 1840, barred free Black immigration, gave residents two years to leave or be sold into slavery, and nullified the 1837 act.
The Ashworth Act
Petitions from Jefferson County, signed by 60, 71 and 61 citizens, asked relief for the Ashworth family and for Elisha Thomas, who served in the army after San Jacinto. An amendment to add William Goyens lost. The Senate extended relief to all free people of color in Texas on the day of the Declaration, with their families, and President Lamar signed the Ashworth Act on December 12. David and Abner Ashworth, who arrived after the Declaration, were the only such free Black people to get permission. Sam Houston effectively postponed enforcement of the 1840 law. The census counted 397 free Black Texans in 1850 and 355 in 1860, and historians think as many again may have gone uncounted.
The townsite is a state park now, and the Barrington farm is worked as in 1850 and tells its enslaved labor too. Start at Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site.