University of Virginia Library

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 inheient and certain un inalienable[46] 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 to abolish it, and to institute new government,
laying it's foundation on such principles, and organizing
it's 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 & transient causes. and
accordingly all experience hath shewn 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,
begun at a distinguished period & 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, & to provide new guards
for their future security. such has been the patient
sufferance of these colonies, & such is now the necessity
which constrains them to expunge alter their former systems
of government. the history of the present king of Great
Britain is a history of unremitting repeated injuries and usurpations,
among which appears no solitary fact to contradict
the uniform tenor of the rest, but all have having in
direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny
over these states. to prove this let facts be submitted
to a candid world, for the truth of which we pledge a
faith yet unsullied by falsehood.

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
& pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation
till his assent should be obtained; and when so
suspended, he has utterly neglected utterly to attend to them.

he has refused to pass other laws for the accomodation of
large districts of people, unless those people would
relinquish the right of representation in the legislature;
a right inestimable to them, & formidable to tyrants
only.

he has called together legislative bodies at places unusual,
uncomfortable, & 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 & continually,
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, & 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 migrations hither; & raising the
conditions of new appropriations of lands.

he has suffered obstructed the administration of justice totally to
cease in some of these states, by refusing his assent to
laws for establishing judiciary powers.

he has made our judges dependent on his will alone, for
the tenure of their offices, and the amount & paiment
of their salaries.

he has erected a multitude of new offices by a self assumed
power, & sent hither swarms of officers to harrass our
people, and eat out their substance.

he has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies
and ships of war, without the consent of our legislatures.

he has affected to render the military independent of, &
superior to, the civil power.

he has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction
foreign to our constitutions and unacknoleged by
our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended
legislation for quartering large bodies of armed troops[47]
among us;

for protecting them by a 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 it's boundaries so
as to render it at once an example & fit instrument
for introducing the same absolute rule into these
states;

for taking away our charters, abolishing our most
valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms
of our governments;

for suspending our own legislatures, & declaring themselves
invested with power to legislate for us in all
cases whatsoever.

he has abdicated government here, withdrawing his
governors, & by declaring us out of his allegiance and
protection and waging war against us.

he has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our
towns, & destroyed the lives of our people.

he is at this time transporting large armies of foreign
mercenaries, to compleat the works of death, desolation
& tyranny, already begun with circumstances of
cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages and totally unworthy the head of a civilized
nation.

he has excited domestic insurrection amongst 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, & conditions of existence

he has incited treasonable insurrections of our fellow
citizens, with the allurements of forfeiture & confiscation
of property

he has constrained our fellow citizens others, taken captives on the high
seas to bear arms against their country, to become the
executioners of their friends & brethren, or to fall
themselves by their hands.

he has waged cruel war against human nature itself,
violating it's most sacred rights of life & liberty in the
persons of a distant people, who never offended him,
captivating and carrying them into slavery in another
hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their trans-

portation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium
of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian
king of Great Britain determined to keep open a
market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has
prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative
attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable
commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might
want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting
those very people to rise in arms among us, and to
purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them,
by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded
them: thus paying off former crimes committed
against the liberties of one people, with crimes
which he urges them to commit against the lives of
another.

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 who
mean to be free. future ages will scarce believe that the
hardiness of one man adventured within the short compass
of twelve years only to build a foundation, so broad and

undisguised, for tyranny over a people fostered and fixed
in principles of freedom.

Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our British
brethren. we have warned them from time to time of
attempts by their legislature to extend a an unwarrantable jurisdiction
over us. these our states we have reminded them of the
circumstances of our emigration and settlement here, no
one of which could warrant so strange a pretension:
that these were effected at the expence of our own blood
and treasure, unassisted by the wealth o the strength
of Great Britain: that in constituting indeed our several
forms of government, we had adopted one common king,
thereby laying a foundation for perpetual league and amity
with them: but that submission to their parliament was
no part of our constitution, nor ever in idea, if history
may be credited: and we have appealed to their native justice
& magnanimity, as well as to and we have conjured them by the tyes of our common
kindred, to disavow these usurpations, which were likely
to would inevitably interrupt our connections & correspondence. they too
have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity[48]
; and when occasions have been given them,
by the regular course of their laws, of removing from their

councils the disturbers of our harmeny, they have by
their free election re-established them in power. at this
very time too, they are permitting their chief magistrate
to send over not only soldiers of our common blood, but
Scotch and foreign mercenaries to invade and destroy
us. these facts have given the last stab to agonizing
affection; and manly spirit bids us to renounce forever
these unfeeling brethren we must therefore endeavor to forget our
former love for them, and to hold them as we hold the
rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends. we
might have been a free & a great people together, but
a communication of grandeur and of freedom, it seems, is
below their dignity be it so, since they will have it
the road to happiness and to glory is open to us too;
we will climb it apart from them, and acquiesce in the
necessity which denounces our eternal 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 & by 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 states,
reject and renounce all allegiance and subjection to the
kings of Great Britain, & all others who may hereafter
claim by, through, or under them; we utterly dissolve

all political connection which may heretofore have subsisted
between us them and the state people or parliament of Great
Britain is & ought to be totally dissolved,; and finally we do assert and declare[49] these
colonies to be free and independent states, & that as
free & independent states, they have full power to levy
war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce,
& 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.