the last book I ever read (Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth, excerpt seven)

from Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford:

De Zavala was encouraged to find a pair of Tejanos, San Antonio’s Ángel Navarro and Francisco Ruiz, who were in attendance. He bunked with them in a rented carpentry shop. But on the very first day, the trio realized they had been badly outflanked. A delegate named George Childress presented the convention with a declaration of independence; to the surprise of almost everyone, and the evident dismay of de Zavala, it was adopted unanimously the next day. De Zavala signed it too. He had little choice. It was clearly going to pass anyway. Afterward, there was a constitution to write. De Zavala took the lead crafting its section on executive powers, and sat on the defense and flag-design committees. The Texas constitution remains the only one in world history to guarantee slavery and actually outlaw any and all emancipation. No free Black people were to be allowed. In a direct reflection of cotton’s wholesale dependence on slave labor, Texas was to be the most militant slavocracy anywhere.