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 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 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 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.
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 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.
New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple,
Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John
Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington,
William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis
Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon,
Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin
Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith,
George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone,
Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas
Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr.,
Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John
Penn
South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr.,
Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
