Ted Poe: “today is my favorite day in Texas history. March 2 marks Texas Independence Day. On this day, 170 years ago, Texas…”

“today is my favorite day in Texas history. March 2 marks Texas Independence Day. On this day, 170 years ago, Texas declared independence from Mexico and its evil dictator, Santa Anna, the 19th century Saddam Hussein, and Texas became a free nation. In 1836, in a small farm village of Washington-on-the-Brazos, 54 ``Texians,'' as they called themselves in those days, gathered on a cold rainy day like today to do something bold and brazen: They gathered to sign the Texas Declaration of Independence and once and for all ``declare that the people of Texas do now constitute a free, sovereign, and independent republic.'' As these determined delegates met to declare independence, Santa Anna and 6,000 enemy troops were marching on an old, beat-up Spanish mission that we now call the Alamo. This is where Texas defenders stood defiant and determined. They were led by a 27-year-old lawyer by the name of William Barrett Travis. The Alamo and its 186 Texans were all that stood between the invaders and the people of Texas. And behind the dark, dank walls of that Alamo, William Barrett Travis, the commander, sent a fiery, urgent appeal requesting aid. His defiant letter read in part: ``To all the people in Texas and America and the world, I am besieged by a thousand or more of the enemy under Santa Anna. I have sustained a continual bombardment and cannon fire for the last 24 hours, but I have not lost a man.…”