A Declaration by the Representatives of the UNITED STATES
OF AMERICA, in General Congress assembled.
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a people to
advance from that subordination in which they have hitherto remained, & to as-
sume among the powers of the earth the equal & independant station to
which the laws of nature & 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 change.
We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are
created equal & independant, that from that equal creation they derive
rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of
life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these ends, go-
vernments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from
the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government
shall become destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter
or to abolish it, & to institute new government, laying it’s foundation on
such principles & organising it’s powers in such form, as to them shall
seem most likely to effect their safety & happiness. prudence indeed
will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for
light & transient causes: and accordingly all experience hath shewn 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 & usurpations, begun at a distinguished period,
& pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to subject
them to arbitrary power, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such
government & to provide new guards for their future security. such has
been the patient sufferance of these colonies; & such is now the necessity
which constrains them to expunge their former systems of government.
the history of his present majesty, is a history of unremitting injuries and
usurpations, among which no one fact stands single or solitary to contra-
dict the uniform tenor of the rest, all of which have in direct object the
establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. to prove this, let facts be
submitted to a candid world, for the truth of which we pledge a faith
yet unsullied by falsehood.
he has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the pub-
lic good:
he has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate & pressing importance,
unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained;
and when so suspended, he has neglected utterly to attend to them.
he has refused to pass other laws for the accomodation of large districts of people
unless those people would relinquish the right of representation, a right
inestimable to them, & formidable to tyrants alone:
he has dissolved Representative houses repeatedly & continually, for opposing with
manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people:
he has refused for a long space of time 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 invasion from without, & 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 migrations hither; & raising the conditions of new ap-
propriations of lands:
he has suffered the administration of justice totally to cease in some of these
colonies, refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers:
he has made our judges dependant on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices,
and amount of their salaries:
he has erected a multitude of new offices by a self-assumed power, & sent hi-
ther swarms of officers to harrass our people & eat out their substance:
he has kept among us in times of peace standing armies & ships of war:
he has affected to render the military, independant of & superior to the civil power:
he has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitu-
tions and unacknoleged by our laws; giving his assent to their pretended acts
of legislation, for quartering large bodies of armed troops among us;
for protecting them by a mock-trial from punishment for any murders
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 of the benefits of trial by jury;
for transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences:
for taking away our charters, & altering fundamentally the forms of our governments;
for suspending our own legislatures & declaring themselves invested with power to
legislate for us in all cases whatsoever:
he has abdicated government here, withdrawing his governors, & declaring us out
of his allegiance & protection:
he has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns & destroyed the
lives of our people:
he is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to compleat
the works of death, desolation & tyranny, already begun with circumstances of
cruelty & perfidy unworthy the head of a civilized nation:
he 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, & conditions of existence:
he has incited treasonable insurrections in our fellow-subjects, with the
allurements of forfeiture & confiscation of our property:
he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sa-
cred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never of-
fended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemi-
sphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this
piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers; is the warfare of the
Christian king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market
where MEN should be bought & sold he has prostituted his negative
for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this
execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact
of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms
among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them,
by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off
former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes
which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.
in every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble
terms; our repeated petitions have been answered 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 people who mean to be free. future ages will scarce believe
that the hardiness of one man, adventured within the short compass of 12 years
only, on so many acts of tyranny without a mask, over a people fostered & fixed in principles
of liberty.
Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. we have
warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend a juris-
diction over these our states. we have reminded them of the circumstances of
our emigration & settlement here, no one of which could warrant so strange a
pretension: that these were effected at the expence of our own blood & treasure,
unassisted by the wealth or the strength of Great Britain: that in constituting
indeed our several forms of government, we had adopted one common king, thereby
laying a foundation for perpetual league & amity with them: but that submission to their
parliament was no part of our constitution, nor ever in idea, if history may be
credited: and we appealed to their native justice & magnanimity, as well as to the ties
of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations which were likely to interrupt
our correspondence & connection. they too have been deaf to the voice of justice &
of consanguinity, & when occasions have been given them, by the regular course of
their laws, of removing from their councils the disturbers of our harmony, they
have by their free election re-established them in power. at this very time too they
are permitting their chief magistrate to send over not only soldiers of our common
blood, but Scotch & foreign mercenaries to invade & deluge us in blood. these facts
have given the last stab to agonizing affection and manly spirit bids us to re-
nounce for ever these unfeeling brethren. we must endeavor to forget our former
love for them, and to hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war,
in peace friends. we might have been a free & a great people together; but a commu-
nication of grandeur & of freedom it seems is below their dignity. be it so, since they
will have it: the road to glory & happiness is open to us too; we will climb it in
a separate state, and acquiesce in the necessity which pronounces our ever-
lasting Adieu!
We therefore the representatives of the United States of America in General Con-
gress assembled do, in the name & by authority of the good people of these states,
reject and renounce all allegiance & subjection to the kings of Great Britain
& all others who may hereafter claim by, through, or under them; we utterly
dissolve & break off all political connection which may have heretofore sub-
sisted between us & the people or parliament of Great Britain; and finally
we do assert and declare these colonies to be free and independant states,
and that as free & independant states they shall hereafter have power to levy
war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, & to do all other
acts and things which independant states may of right do. And for the
support of this declaration we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our
fortunes, & our sacred honour.