DECLARATION
OF INDEPENDENCE JULY
4, 1776 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 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
mean time, exposed to all the dangers of invasions 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
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 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 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, 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 insurrection among us, and has endeavored 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 our 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
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. [Signed by] John Hancock [President] New Hampshire Josiah Bartlett, Wm. Whipple, Matthew Thornton. Massachusetts Bay Saml. Adams, John Adams, Robt. Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry Rhode Island Step. Hopkins, William Ellery. Connecticut Roger Sherman, Sam'el Huntington, Wm. Williams, Oliver Wolcott. New York Wm. Floyd, Phil. Livingston, Frans. Lewis, Lewis Morris. New Jersey Richd. Stockton, Jno. Witherspoon, Fras. Hopkinson, John Hart, Abra. Clark. Pennsylvania Robt. Morris Benjamin Rush, Benja. Franklin, John Morton, Geo. Clymer, Jas. Smith, Geo. Taylor, James Wilson, Geo. Ross. Delaware Caesar Rodney, Geo. Read, Tho. M'kean. Maryland Samuel Chase, Wm. Paca, Thos. Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton. Virginia George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Th. Jefferson, Benja. Harrison, Ths. Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton. North Carolina Wm. Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn. South Carolina Edward Rutledge, Thos. Hayward, Junr., Thomas Lynch, Junr., Arthur Middleton. Georgia Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, Geo. Walton. Note: Mr.
Ferdinand Jefferson, Keeper of the Rolls in the Department of State, at
Washington, says: " The names of the signers are spelt above as in the
facsimile of the original, but the punctuation of them is not always the same;
neither do the names of the States appear in the facsimile of the original. The
names of the signers of each State are grouped together in the facsimile of the
original, except the name of Matthew Thornton, which follows that of Oliver
Wolcott."-Revised Statutes of the United States, 2d edition, 1878, p. 6. FONTE: |
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