|
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 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 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 mean time 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 harrass 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 Quartering large bodies of armed
troops among us:
- 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 compleat the works of
death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of
Cruelty & 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 Brittish 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 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.
The 56 signatures on the Declaration appear in the positions indicated:
[Column 1]
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton
[Column 2]
North Carolina:
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton
[Column 3]
Massachusetts:
John Hancock
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
[Column 4]
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
[Column 5]
New York:
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark
[Column 6]
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Massachusetts:
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott
New Hampshire:
Matthew Thornton
|
