Declaration of
[Adopted in Congress
The Unanimous Declaration of the
Thirteen
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 from 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 totaly unworth 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 levey 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.