Kay Bailey Hutchison: “I want to take a moment, as I do on March 2 every year since I have been in the Senate, and before me Senator John Tower…”

“I want to take a moment, as I do on March 2 every year since I have been in the Senate, and before me Senator John Tower did the same thing, to commemorate Texas Independence Day. Today is, indeed, the 169th anniversary of the day when a solemn convention of 54 men in a small Texas settlement took a step which had a momentous impact, not only on Texas but on the future of the United States. These 54 men, including my great-great-grandfather Charles S. Taylor from the town of Nacogdoches, met on March 2, 1836. They were in Washington-on-the-Brazos and, after laying out the grievances they had with the Government of Mexico, they declared: We therefore . . . do hereby resolve and declare . . . that the people of Texas do now constitute a free, sovereign and independent republic. They brought the Lone Star Republic into existence with those words.”