THE 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 creat-
        ed 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 gov-
        erned.

        That  whenever  any  Form  of  Government becomes destructive of
        these ends, it is the Right  of the People to alter or  to abol-
        ish 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 Happi-
        ness. Prudence, indeed, will  dictate that Governments long  es-
        tablished 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 invar-
        iably 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 neces-
        sary 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,  in-
        capable 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 of Naturalization of  For-
        eigners; 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.

        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 super-
        ior 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  mercen-
        aries 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  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 execu-
        tioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves  by
        their Hands.

        He has excited  domestic insurrections amongst  us, and has  en-
        deavoured  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  Re-
        dress 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 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.

        JOHN HANCOCK, President

        Attested, CHARLES THOMSON, Secretary

        New Hampshire
         JOSIAH BARTLETT
         WILLIAM WHIPPLE
         MATTHEW THORNTON

        Massachusetts-Bay
         SAMUEL ADAMS
         JOHN ADAMS
         ROBERT TREAT PAINE
         ELBRIDGE GERRY

        Rhode Island
         STEPHEN HOPKINS
         WILLIAM ELLERY

        Connecticut
         ROGER SHERMAN
         SAMUEL HUNTINGTON
         WILLIAM WILLIAMS
         OLIVER WOLCOTT

        Georgia
         BUTTON GWINNETT
         LYMAN HALL
         GEO. WALTON

        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.

        New York
         WILLIAM FLOYD
         PHILIP LIVINGSTON
         FRANCIS LEWIS
         LEWIS MORRIS

        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 M'KEAN

        North Carolina
         WILLIAM HOOPER
         JOSEPH HEWES
         JOHN PENN

        South Carolina
         EDWARD RUTLEDGE
         THOMAS HEYWARD, JR.
         THOMAS LYNCH, JR.
         ARTHUR MIDDLETON

        New Jersey
         RICHARD STOCKTON
         JOHN WITHERSPOON
         FRANCIS HOPKINS
         JOHN HART
         ABRAHAM CLARK
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