Declaration of Independence
[Adopted
in Congress 4 July 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 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.
