The Unanimous Declaration of the
Thirteen United States of America
In Congress, July 4, 1776
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 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 mean time, exposed to all the dangers of invasions 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 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
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 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, 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 totally unworthy 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 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 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.
JOHN HANCOCK
New Hampshire
JOSIAH BARTLETT,
WM. WHIPPLE,
MATTHEW THORNTON.
Massachusetts Bay
SAML. ADAMS,
JOHN ADAMS,
ROBT. TREAT PAINE,
ELBRIDGE GERRY
Rhode Island
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.
Virginia
GEORGE WYTHE,
RICHARD HENRY LEE,
TH. JEFFERSON,
BENJA. HARRISON,
THS. NELSON, JR.,
FRANCIS LIGHTFOOT LEE,
CARTER BRAXTON.
North Carolina
WM. HOOPER,
JOSEPH HEWES,
JOHN PENN.
South Carolina
EDWARD RUTLEDGE,
THOS. HAYWARD, JUNR.,
THOMAS LYNCH, JUNR.,
ARTHUR MIDDLETON.
Georgia
BUTTON GWINNETT,
LYMAN HALL,
GEO. WALTON.
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