THE following preamble and specifications, known as the Declaration of
Independence, accompanied the resolution of Richard Henry Lee, which was
adopted by Congress on the 2d day of July, 1776. This declaration was
agreed to on the 4th, and the transaction is thus recorded in the
Journal for that day:
"Agreeably to the order of the day, the Congress resolved itself into a
committee of the whole, to take into their further consideration the
Declaration; and, after some time, the president resumed the chair, and
Mr. Harrison reported that the committee have agreed to a Declaration,
which they desired him to report. The Declaration being read, was agreed
to as follows:"
A DECLARATION BY THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES
OF AMERICA, IN CONGRESS ASSEMBLED.
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 inalienable 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 abolish it, and to institute a new government,
laying its foundations 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.
1. He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary
for the public good.
2. He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing
importance, unless suspended in their operations till his assent should
be obtained; and, when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend
to them.
3. 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.
4. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual,
uncomfortable, and distant from the repository of their public records,
for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his
measures.
5. He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing, with
manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people.
6. 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
invasions from without, and convulsions within.
7. He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that
purpose obstructing the laws for the naturalization of foreigners;
refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising
the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
8. He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his
assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
9. He has made judges dependent on his will alone for the tenure on
their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
10. He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of
officers, to harass our people and eat out their substance.
11. He has kept among us in times of peace, standing armies, without the
consent of our Legislatures.
12. He has affected to render the military independent of, and superior
to, the civil power.
13. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign
to our constitutions, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent
to their acts of pretended legislation;
14. For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us;
15. For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any
murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these States;
16. For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world;
17. For imposing taxes on us without our consent;
18. For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of a trial by jury;
19. For transporting us beyond seas, to be tried for pretended offenses;
20. 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.
21. For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and
altering, fundamentally, the forms of our governments.
22. For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves
invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
23. He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his
protection, and waging war against us.
24. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and
destroyed the lives of our people.
25. 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.
26. 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.
27. 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 Stales 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 foregoing declaration was, by order of Congress, engrossed, and
signed by the following members:
JOHN HANCOCK.
NEW HAMPSHIRE.
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton.
MASSACHUSETTS BAY.
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 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 M'Kean.
MARYLAND.
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll, of Carrollton.
VIRGINIA.
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison,
Thomas Nelson, Jun., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton.
NORTH CAROLINA.
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn.
SOUTH CAROLINA. Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jun.,
Thomas Lynch, Jun., Arthur Middleton.
GEORGIA.
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton.