Declaration of Independence
Thomas Jefferson
1
July 4, 1776
2When 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.
3We hold these truths to be self-evident:
4That 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.
5He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
6He 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.
7He 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.
8He 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.
9He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing, with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people.
10He 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.
11He 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.
12He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
13He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
14He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
15He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures.
16He has affected to render the military independent of, and superior to, the civil power.
17He 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:
18For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us;
19For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states;
20For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world;
21For imposing taxes on us without our consent;
22For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury;
23For transporting us beyond seas, to be tried for pretended offenses;
24For 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;
25For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments;
26For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
27He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.
28He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
29He 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.
30He 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.
31He 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.
32In 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.
33Nor 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.
34We, 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.
35[Signed by] JOHN HANCOCK [President]
36New Hampshire
37JOSIAH BARTLETT,
38WM. WHIPPLE,
39MATTHEW THORNTON.
40Massachusetts Bay
41SAML. ADAMS,
42JOHN ADAMS,
43ROBT. TREAT PAINE,
44ELBRIDGE GERRY
45Rhode Island
46STEP. HOPKINS,
47WILLIAM ELLERY.
48Connecticut
49ROGER SHERMAN,
50SAM’EL HUNTINGTON,
51WM. WILLIAMS,
52OLIVER WOLCOTT.
53New York
54WM. FLOYD,
55PHIL. LIVINGSTON,
56FRANS. LEWIS,
57LEWIS MORRIS.
58New Jersey
59RICHD. STOCKTON,
60JNO. WITHERSPOON,
61FRAS. HOPKINSON,
62JOHN HART,
63ABRA. CLARK.
64Pennsylvania
65ROBT. MORRIS
66BENJAMIN RUSH,
67BENJA. FRANKLIN,
68JOHN MORTON,
69GEO. CLYMER,
70JAS. SMITH,
71GEO. TAYLOR,
72JAMES WILSON,
73GEO. ROSS.
74Delaware
75CAESAR RODNEY,
76GEO. READ,
77THO. M’KEAN.
78Maryland
79SAMUEL CHASE,
80WM. PACA,
81THOS. STONE,
82CHARLES CARROLL of Carrollton.
83Virginia
84GEORGE WYTHE,
85RICHARD HENRY LEE,
86TH. JEFFERSON,
87BENJA. HARRISON,
88THS. NELSON, JR.,
89FRANCIS LIGHTFOOT LEE,
90CARTER BRAXTON.
91North Carolina
92WM. HOOPER,
93JOSEPH HEWES,
94JOHN PENN.
95South Carolina
96EDWARD RUTLEDGE,
97THOS. HAYWARD, JUNR.,
98THOMAS LYNCH, JUNR.,
99ARTHUR MIDDLETON.
100Georgia
101BUTTON GWINNETT,
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