Declaration of Independence
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
eliance on the protection of Divine
Providence, we mutually pledge to
each other our lives, our fortunes and
our sacred honor.
