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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