Contents:

Declaration of Independence.............................................................................................................................1

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds

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 selfevident, 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

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

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

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

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out

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

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the

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

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all

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

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

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

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. 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

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 levey 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