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Declaration of Independence
July 4, 1776
The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America.
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one
people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another,
and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to
which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to
the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which
impel them to the separation.
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,
that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure
these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers
form the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes
destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish
it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles
and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to
effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that
governments long established should not be changed for light and transient
causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more
disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by
abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of
abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to
reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to
throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
--Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the
necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government.
The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated
injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an
absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a
candid world.
He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary
for the public good.
He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and
pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should
be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large
districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of
representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable
to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual,
uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the
sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing
with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause
others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of
annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the
state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from
without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for
that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to
pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new
appropriations of lands.
He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his
assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of
their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms
of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without
the consent of our legislature.
He has affected to render the military independent of and superior
to civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign
to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their
acts of pretended legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders
which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:
For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing taxes on us without our consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:
For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:
For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring
province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its
boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for
introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:
For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws,
and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:
For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves
invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his
protection and waging war against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns,
and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries
to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with
circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous
ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high
seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their
friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has
endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian
savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all
ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress
in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by
repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which
may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We
have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend
an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the
circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their
native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our
common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt
our connections and correspondence. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the
necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest
of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America,
in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for
the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the
good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united
colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they
are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political
connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be
totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full
power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and
to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And
for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of
Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and
our sacred honor.
New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine,
Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart,
Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton,
George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of
Carrollton
Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison,
Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur
Middleton
Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton.
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