Source: Declaration
of Independence, 4 July 1776.
(Adopted in Congress 4
July 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