In
CONGRESS, 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.
