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.