“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right.”— Thomas Paine, Common Sense, January 1776
The Capitol Dome That Almost Wasn't Built in Austin
On a cold December night in 1842, armed men rode into Austin under cover of darkness. They weren't bandits or soldiers — they were government officials, ordered by President Sam Houston to seize the Republic of Texas archives and move them to Houston. What happened next would determine whether Austin remained the capital of Texas or faded into history as a failed frontier experiment.
The story begins three years earlier, in 1839, when Mirabeau B. Lamar became the second president of the Republic of Texas. Unlike his predecessor Sam Houston, who favored establishing the capital in the city that bore his name, Lamar envisioned a new city rising from the wilderness. He dispatched a commission to explore the Colorado River valley, and when they returned with glowing reports of a site called…
1.Austin is the only major U.S. city with its own power company — Austin Energy, municipally owned since 1895, meaning residents elect the officials who control their electricity rates.
2.Travis County had 861,572 registered voters in 2024, with turnout reaching 68% in the presidential election — above the national average of 62%.
3.The Texas Constitution has been amended 517 times since 1876, making it one of the longest state constitutions in America — compared to the U.S. Constitution's 27 amendments in 236 years.
The Capitol Dome That Almost Wasn't Built in Austin
On a cold December night in 1842, armed men rode into Austin under cover of darkness. They weren't bandits or soldiers — they were government officials, ordered by President Sam Houston to seize the Republic of Texas archives and move them to Houston. What happened next would determine whether Austin remained the capital of Texas or faded into history as a failed frontier experiment.
The story begins three years earlier, in 1839, when Mirabeau B. Lamar became the second president of the Republic of Texas. Unlike his predecessor Sam Houston, who favored establishing the capital in the city that bore his name, Lamar envisioned a new city rising from the wilderness. He dispatched a commission to explore the Colorado River valley, and when they returned with glowing reports of a site called Waterloo, Lamar made his decision. The Republic would build its capital there, and it would be named Austin, honoring Stephen F. Austin, the empresario who brought the first American settlers to Mexican Texas.
The Texas Congress approved the move by a single vote. Jacob Harrell, a buffalo hunter and scout, guided surveyors to the exact location — a series of hills overlooking the Colorado River, with abundant timber, fresh water, and a commanding view of the surrounding prairie. Edwin Waller, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, laid out a grid of streets fourteen blocks long and seven blocks wide. By October 1839, the first government offices opened in temporary frame buildings, and Austin became the capital of an independent nation.
But Sam Houston never accepted the decision. When he returned to the presidency in 1841, he declared Austin too remote, too vulnerable to Mexican attack, and too difficult to defend. He wanted the government moved to Houston or Washington-on-the-Brazos. Austin residents suspected his real motive: civic rivalry. In December 1842, Houston ordered the national archives — the laws, treaties, and official records of the Republic — transferred to Houston for 'safekeeping.'
The laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them to a separate and equal station.— Declaration of Independence, 1776
The Founders built the entire American system on one premise: certain principles of right and wrong exist independent of any government. They called it Natural Law — the idea that reason and observation reveal universal rules for human conduct. Just governments don't create rights. They recognize ones that already exist.
•Austin City Council recently approved a $5.5 billion budget, including funding for public safety, parks, libraries, and affordable housing initiatives — decisions that affect daily life for every resident.
•Austin ISD School Board oversees 122 schools serving 74,000 students, with authority over curriculum, teacher hiring, facility construction, and a $1.6 billion annual budget funded by local property taxes.
•Travis County Commissioners Court manages roads, emergency services, public health, and the county jail, with a $1.2 billion budget covering services outside Austin city limits and countywide infrastructure.
“Flora teaches A Virtuous and Moral People — one of the 28 founding principles that shaped America. Every quarter, a new character and principle arrive at your door. Collect all 28 to complete the set.”
Texas RioGrande Legal Aid offers free assistance to low-income residents navigating government benefits, voting rights, and public records requests. Visit trla.org or call 512-374-2700 to learn if you qualify for free legal help.
Attend an Austin City Council meeting — they meet most Thursdays at 10 a.m. at City Hall, 301 W. Second Street. Public comment is welcomed.
The first patent for a cooling system was filed in 1902. Before that, Congress debated in sweltering heat — and some historians argue shorter sessions made for shorter laws. Your comfort standards didn't exist a century ago.
Scan to learn how building codes became constitutional →
Austin citizens had other ideas. When a wagon train arrived in the middle of the night to haul away the archives, local resident Angelina Eberly fired a cannon from her boarding house to sound the alarm. Armed residents surrounded the wagons at Kenney's Fort, eighteen miles north of town, and forced the archive raiders to turn back. The 'Archive War' became legend — the moment Austin proved it would not surrender its claim to be the capital of Texas.
The pink granite Texas State Capitol, completed in 1888, stands as the physical embodiment of that determination. At 311 feet tall, it rises higher than the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. — a deliberate statement of Texas pride. The building consumed 15,000 carloads of limestone and granite from Granite Mountain near Marble Falls, hauled by a custom-built railroad spur. Convict labor and skilled stonemasons worked side by side for seven years. When the Goddess of Liberty statue was finally placed atop the dome, Austin's status as the permanent capital was beyond dispute.
Walk through downtown Austin today, and you're walking through layers of that history. The Old Bakery and Emporium on Congress Avenue, built in 1876, served as a gathering place for legislators and lobbyists. The Driskill Hotel, opened in 1886, became the unofficial headquarters for political dealmaking. The Texas Governor's Mansion, completed in 1856, has housed every governor since Elisha M. Pease. These aren't just historic buildings — they're the physical infrastructure of self-governance, still in use, still shaping the decisions that affect millions of Texans.
Austin's role as capital shaped everything else about the city. The University of Texas, established in 1883, became one of the nation's great public universities precisely because it sat at the center of state government. The library collections, the legal research facilities, the proximity to policymakers — all flowed from Austin's political identity. When Lyndon Baines Johnson returned to Texas after his presidency, he placed his presidential library at UT Austin, cementing the city's role as a center of political history and civic education.
The city's explosive growth in recent decades — from 186,000 residents in 1960 to nearly one million today — hasn't erased that civic foundation. Every Thursday during the legislative session, the Capitol rotunda fills with citizens advocating for causes, testifying before committees, and exercising their right to petition their government. The building remains open to the public, a rare accessibility in an age of security concerns. You can walk into your State Representative's office without an appointment, attend committee hearings, and watch democracy in action.
As America celebrates its 250th anniversary in 2026, Austin's story offers a crucial reminder: self-governance is not automatic. It requires institutions, yes — but also vigilance. Angelina Eberly didn't fire that cannon because she loved archives. She fired it because she understood that a republic depends on citizens willing to defend it, even in small ways, even when it's inconvenient. The Archive War wasn't fought with armies. It was won by ordinary people who showed up.
Today, Austin faces different challenges. Rapid growth strains infrastructure. Housing costs rise. Traffic chokes the highways. But the fundamental work of self-governance continues in the same rooms where it began 186 years ago. The Texas Legislature still meets in the Capitol built in 1888. The Austin City Council still gathers to debate zoning, budgets, and ordinances. The school board still makes decisions about curriculum and facilities. And all of it — every decision, every vote, every public hearing — rests on the participation of informed citizens.
Common Sense Quarterly exists because that participation requires knowledge. The Founders of the American republic understood this deeply. Thomas Jefferson wrote that 'if a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.' Austin's founders — Lamar, Waller, Eberly, and the citizens who refused to surrender their archives — understood it too. They built institutions designed to last centuries, to educate generations, to preserve the possibility of self-governance.
The businesses sponsoring this postcard are your neighbors. They're investing not just in advertising, but in civic infrastructure — in the idea that an informed community is a stronger community. When you support them, you're participating in a tradition as old as Austin itself: citizens taking responsibility for the civic health of their city. Scan the QR code on this postcard to explore deeper resources about Austin's history, the structure of local government, and how you can participate in the decisions shaping your community. Your city is counting on you. The next 250 years depend on what we do now.
Principle of the Quarter
The Founders built the entire American system on one premise: certain principles of right and wrong exist independent of any government. They called it Natural Law — the idea that reason and observation reveal universal rules for human conduct. Just governments don't create rights. They recognize ones that already exist.
Ancient Philosophy: Cicero's De Legibus (c. 52 BC) argued that true law is right reason in agreement with nature, universal and unchanging — an idea that lay dormant for centuries before the Founders revived it. The Founders drew directly from this classical tradition to argue that British law violated a higher standard of justice.
Civil Rights Movement: In his 1963 Letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. distinguished between just laws and unjust laws, citing St. Augustine and Aquinas — invoking the same Natural Law tradition the Founders used. King's argument demonstrated that Natural Law reasoning remained a tool for challenging unjust statutes 187 years after the Declaration.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." — Declaration of Independence, Paragraph 2, 1776
"The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature." — Alexander Hamilton, The Farmer Refuted, 1775
This Quarter's Challenge: Name one right you believe exists whether or not any government recognizes it. Where does that right come from?
1. Austin is the only major U.S. city with its own power company — Austin Energy, municipally owned since 1895, meaning residents elect the officials who control their electricity rates.
2. Travis County had 861,572 registered voters in 2024, with turnout reaching 68% in the presidential election — above the national average of 62%.
3. The Texas Constitution has been amended 517 times since 1876, making it one of the longest state constitutions in America — compared to the U.S. Constitution's 27 amendments in 236 years.
Flora's Story
Flora teaches A Virtuous and Moral People — one of the 28 founding principles that shaped America. Every quarter, a new character and principle arrive at your door. Collect all 28 to complete the set.
Texas RioGrande Legal Aid offers free assistance to low-income residents navigating government benefits, voting rights, and public records requests. Visit trla.org or call 512-374-2700 to learn if you qualify for free legal help.
City Council: Austin's City Council consists of ten district representatives plus a mayor elected citywide, forming an 11-member body. The Council meets most Thursdays at 10 a.m. at City Hall, 301 W. Second Street, and holds evening meetings approximately once per month. Citizens may sign up for public comment on agenda items or speak during citizen communication (three minutes per speaker). The Council passes the city budget, approves zoning changes, sets utility rates, authorizes contracts, and enacts ordinances governing everything from building codes to noise regulations. Recent actions include approving affordable housing initiatives, revising the land development code, and funding police and fire department budgets.
School Board: Austin Independent School District is governed by a nine-member Board of Trustees elected from single-member districts to staggered four-year terms. The Board typically meets on the third Monday of each month at 6 p.m. at the Carruth Administration Center, 1111 W. Sixth Street. The Board controls the district's $1.6 billion budget, sets curriculum standards (within state requirements), hires and evaluates the superintendent, approves teacher contracts, authorizes school construction and renovation, and sets academic policies affecting 74,000 students in 122 schools. Parents and community members may address the Board during public comment periods, typically limited to two or three minutes per speaker, and all meetings are live-streamed online.
County Commission: The Travis County Commissioners Court consists of four commissioners elected from geographic precincts plus the County Judge, elected countywide, who serves as the presiding officer. The Court meets most Tuesdays at 9 a.m. in the Commissioners Courtroom at 700 Lavaca Street. Despite its name, the Commissioners Court is the executive and legislative body of county government, not a judicial court. It manages a $1.2 billion budget, maintains county roads and bridges outside Austin city limits, operates the county jail and sheriff's office, provides indigent health care, oversees emergency management, and conducts countywide elections. Citizens may speak during public comment periods, and meetings are broadcast live on the county's YouTube channel.
The laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them to a separate and equal station.
— Declaration of Independence, 1776
The Founders built the entire American system on one premise: certain principles of right and wrong exist independent of any government. They called it Natural Law — the idea that reason and observation reveal universal rules for human conduct. Just governments don't create rights. They recognize ones that already exist.
This Quarter's Challenge
Name one right you believe exists whether or not any government recognizes it. Where does that right come from?
Austin's City Council consists of ten district representatives plus a mayor elected citywide, forming an 11-member body. The Council meets most Thursdays at 10 a.m. at City Hall, 301 W. Second Street, and holds evening meetings approximately once per month. Citizens may sign up for public comment on agenda items or speak during citizen communication (three minutes per speaker). The Council passes the city budget, approves zoning changes, sets utility rates, authorizes contracts, and enacts ordinances governing everything from building codes to noise regulations. Recent actions include approving affordable housing initiatives, revising the land development code, and funding police and fire department budgets.
School Board
Austin Independent School District is governed by a nine-member Board of Trustees elected from single-member districts to staggered four-year terms. The Board typically meets on the third Monday of each month at 6 p.m. at the Carruth Administration Center, 1111 W. Sixth Street. The Board controls the district's $1.6 billion budget, sets curriculum standards (within state requirements), hires and evaluates the superintendent, approves teacher contracts, authorizes school construction and renovation, and sets academic policies affecting 74,000 students in 122 schools. Parents and community members may address the Board during public comment periods, typically limited to two or three minutes per speaker, and all meetings are live-streamed online.
County Commission
The Travis County Commissioners Court consists of four commissioners elected from geographic precincts plus the County Judge, elected countywide, who serves as the presiding officer. The Court meets most Tuesdays at 9 a.m. in the Commissioners Courtroom at 700 Lavaca Street. Despite its name, the Commissioners Court is the executive and legislative body of county government, not a judicial court. It manages a $1.2 billion budget, maintains county roads and bridges outside Austin city limits, operates the county jail and sheriff's office, provides indigent health care, oversees emergency management, and conducts countywide elections. Citizens may speak during public comment periods, and meetings are broadcast live on the county's YouTube channel.
Cicero's De Legibus (c. 52 BC) argued that true law is right reason in agreement with nature, universal and unchanging — an idea that lay dormant for centuries before the Founders revived it.
The Founders drew directly from this classical tradition to argue that British law violated a higher standard of justice.
Civil Rights Movement
In his 1963 Letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr. distinguished between just laws and unjust laws, citing St. Augustine and Aquinas — invoking the same Natural Law tradition the Founders used.
King's argument demonstrated that Natural Law reasoning remained a tool for challenging unjust statutes 187 years after the Declaration.
The Ninth Amendment protects all rights not specifically listed in the Constitution, serving as a reminder that the Bill of Rights is not exhaustive. In Austin, this means when you homeschool your children, choose your own medical treatment, travel freely between states, or decide what books to read, you're exercising unenumerated rights the Ninth Amendment safeguards. When parents in Austin challenge school curriculum or zoning laws infringe on property use, they often invoke principles rooted in Natural Law — rights that exist whether or not explicitly written in statute. The amendment prevents government from claiming that because a right isn't mentioned in the Constitution, it doesn't exist.
Your Civic Responsibility
Your responsibility as an Austin citizen is to recognize that rights extend beyond what's written — and to defend those rights through civic participation. This means speaking at City Council meetings when policies threaten liberties, educating yourself about which government actions respect Natural Law versus which violate it, and holding elected officials accountable to principles higher than mere majority rule. It also means respecting others' unenumerated rights even when you disagree with how they're exercised.
Common Misconception
Many people mistakenly believe that if a right isn't explicitly listed in the Constitution or Bill of Rights, government can regulate it freely. The Ninth Amendment exists precisely to prevent this assumption — the Founders knew they couldn't list every right, so they wrote an amendment protecting the ones they didn't name.
Natural Law Lives in Austin's Open Government Tradition
Every Thursday morning when the Texas Legislature is in session, citizens walk into the Capitol without appointments, metal detectors, or credentials — and testify before committees shaping state law. This accessibility reflects Natural Law's core premise: government answers to the people, not vice versa. Austin maintains this tradition locally, too. City Council meetings reserve time for public comment. School board sessions open with citizen communication. County commissioners hear from residents on every agenda item. These aren't merely procedural courtesies — they're institutional acknowledgments that citizens possess inherent rights to petition, speak, and participate in governance. The Founders called these 'unalienable' rights because no government grants them; citizens possess them by nature. When Austin keeps government meetings open and accessible, the city honors the same Natural Law foundation that justified American independence in 1776.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”
“The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature.”
Austin's founding in 1839 embodied the Natural Law principle that government exists to serve the people, not the other way around. When Mirabeau B. Lamar selected this wilderness site for the capital of the Republic of Texas, he was executing the will of elected representatives who believed a frontier democracy needed a capital built from scratch — unsullied by colonial history, accessible to settlers pushing westward. The Archive War of 1842, when Austin residents forcibly prevented President Sam Houston from moving government records to Houston, demonstrated the Founders' conviction that sovereignty resides in the people. Angelina Eberly and her neighbors weren't defending buildings — they were defending the principle that citizens, not executives, determine where government sits. This same Natural Law reasoning appears in the Texas Declaration of Independence (1836), which echoed the American Declaration's language about unalienable rights. Austin became the permanent capital because Texans believed they possessed the inherent right to choose their own government's location — a right no president could override.
Every sponsor on this postcard teaches a civic lesson. Tap any sponsor to read their full story.
Capitol City Legal Group
Legal & Estate Planning
The Fifth Amendment protects your right to pass down what you've built. But before 1789, the government could seize your property without a hearing. Estate planning exercises a freedom that took a revolution to win.
In 1840, America founded the world's first dental school — the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery. Colonial Americans had zero dental regulation. Today your {city} dentist meets 47 federal and state standards before touching your teeth.
The first property deed recorded in Okaloosa County dates to 1917 — but the property rights behind it trace to the Magna Carta in 1215. Your home title is backed by 800 years of legal evolution.
The first patent for a cooling system was filed in 1902. Before that, Congress debated in sweltering heat — and some historians argue shorter sessions made for shorter laws. Your comfort standards didn't exist a century ago.
The Founders put the Appropriations Clause in Article I, Section 9 — requiring every dollar of public money to be accounted for. They made transparent bookkeeping a constitutional principle before it was a profession.
America's first speed limit was 12 mph — set in 1901 in Connecticut. Today, 23 federal agencies regulate your vehicle before it leaves the lot. How did we get from horse trails to highway law in one century?
Benjamin Franklin started America's first insurance company in 1752 — the Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire. The man who helped write the Declaration also invented your homeowner's policy.
The first federal food safety law wasn't passed until 1906 — after Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle horrified the nation. For America's first 130 years, nobody regulated what you ate. Today there are 43 federal food safety codes.
The Founders had working animals, not "fur babies." The first animal cruelty law in America wasn't passed until 1866. Pet ownership law is entirely a modern invention — and it's more complex than most people think.
George Washington made his troops exercise daily at Valley Forge — not for fitness, but for discipline. The idea that citizens have a right to personal wellness didn't enter American law until the 20th century.
The right to choose your own healthcare provider wasn't guaranteed until the 14th Amendment was tested in court. For most of American history, the government could decide who treated you and how.
Your property rights are older than the Constitution itself — John Locke argued in 1689 that ownership begins the moment you mix your labor with the land. But HOA rules, zoning laws, and permit codes? Those came later.
The first building code in America was passed in 1625 in New Amsterdam — it required every house to have a fire bucket. Four hundred years later, Florida's building code is 9,000 pages. The principle is the same: protect thy neighbor.
The Constitution says nothing about retirement. Social Security didn't exist until 1935. For America's first 159 years, "growing old with dignity" was a family matter, not a federal promise. How did that change?
Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson fought bitterly over whether America should even have a national bank. Hamilton won — temporarily. The bank was created, killed, recreated, and killed again before the Federal Reserve settled it in 1913.
Cosmetology licensing didn't exist in America until 1927. Before that, anyone could hang a sign and call themselves a barber — no training, no standards, no inspections. Today your stylist holds a state-regulated professional license.
The first U.S. Pharmacopeia was published in 1820 — a book of drug standards written because nobody could agree on what was actually medicine and what was snake oil. It took America 44 years to start regulating what you swallow.
Thomas Jefferson proposed free public education in 1779. It took almost a century for every state to agree. The Founders believed self-government was impossible without an educated citizenry — and they put their money where their mouth was.
The Environmental Protection Agency didn't exist until 1970. For nearly 200 years, there were no federal rules about what chemicals could be used in American homes. The cleaning products under your sink are more regulated than colonial gunpowder.
The Founders protected creative work in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution — the Copyright Clause. It's one of only two individual rights written into the original document before the Bill of Rights existed.
