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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