The
Declaration of Independence
In Congress
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
bands 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 from the consent of the governed. That whenever any
Form of Government becomes destructive of 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 shewn, 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 [George III] 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 endeavoured to prevent
the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing
the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to
pass others to encourage their migrations 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
legislatures.
- He has affected to render the
Military independent of and superior to the 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 protecting them by a 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 offences:
- For abolishing the free System
of English Laws in a neighbouring 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 into 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, burnt 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 endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants
of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose
known rule of warfare is an 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 attentions
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.
They too have been deaf to the
voice of justice and of consanguinity. 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.
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple,
Matthew Thornton, John
Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge
Gerry, Stephen Hopkins,
William Ellery, Roger
Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott, William
Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris, Richard
Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart,
Abraham Clark, Robert
Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George
Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George
Ross, Caesar Rodney,
George Read, Thomas McKean, Samuel
Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll, George
Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison,
Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton, William
Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn, Edward
Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur
Middleton, Button Gwinnett,
Lyman Hall, George Walton.
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