    [United States Senate Manual, 116th Congress]
    [S. Doc. 116-1]
    [Historical Documents]
    [Pages 523-528]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 523]]
                                           [1700]
                ____________________________________________________________

                                 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

                                  IN CONGRESS JULY 4, 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 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 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 of 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 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, 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;

    [[Page 524]]

                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 dispository 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 mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from
                without, and convulsions within.
                    He has endeavoured 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, 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.

    [[Page 525]]

                    He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and 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
                without the Consent of our legislatures.
                    He has affected to render the Military independent of
                and superior to the 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 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 offences:
                    For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a
                neighbouring 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:
                    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, burnt our
                towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
                    He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign
                Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and
                tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty &
                perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and
                totally unworthy of the Head of a civilized nation.
                    He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on
                the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country,

    [[Page 526]]

                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 endeavoured 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 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 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 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

    [[Page 527]]

                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

                Vosiah Bartlett,
                Wm. Whipple,
                Matthew Thornton.

                                Massachusetts Bay

                Saml. Adams,
                John Adams,
                Robt. Treat Paine,
                Elbridge Gerry.

                               Rhode Island, etc.

                Step. Hopkins,
                William Ellery.

                                   Connecticut

                Roger Sherman,
                Sam'el Huntington,
                Wm. Williams,
                Oliver Wolcott.

                                    New York

                Wm. Floyd,
                Phil. Livingston,
                Frans. Lewis,
                Lewis Morris.

                                   New Jersey

                Richd. Stockton,
                Jno. Witherspoon,
                Fras. Hopkinson,
                John Hart,
                Abra Clark.

                                  Pennsylvania

                Robt. Morris,
                Benjamin Rush,
                Benja. Franklin,
                John Morton,
                Geo. Clymer,
                Jas. Smith,
                Geo. Taylor,
                James Wilson,
                Geo. Ross.

                                    Delaware

                Caesar Rodney,
                Geo. Read,
                Tho. M'Kean.

                                    Maryland

                Samuel Chase,
                Wm. Paca,

                Thos. Stone,
                Charles Carroll of
                  Carrollton.

    [[Page 528]]

                                    Virginia

                George Withe,
                Richard Henry Lee,
                Th. Jefferson,
                Benja. Harrison,
                Thos. Nelson, Jr.,
                Francis Lightfoot Lee,
                Carter Braxton.

                                 North Carolina

                Wm. Hooper,
                Joseph Hewes,
                John Penn.

                                 South Carolina

                Edward Rutledge,
                Thos. Heyward, Junr.,
                Thomas Lynch, Junr.,
                Arthur Middleton.

                                     Georgia

                Button Gwinnett,
                Lyman Hall,

                Geo. Walton.

                    Resolved, That copies of the Declaration be sent to the
                several assemblies, conventions, and committees or councils
                of safety, and to the several commanding officers of the
                Continental Troops: That it be proclaimed in each of the
                United States, and at the Head of the Army.--[Jour. Cong.,
                vol. 1, p. 396.]
                                  articles of confederation

                articles of confederation