Original Author --- Thomas Jefferson [Editorial comment in blue]
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 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 has 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 (England, Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland) 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 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 superior 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:
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
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 an 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 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.
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.
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The 99 men who signed the Declaration of Independence knew that they were signing their own death sentence should the King of Great Britain win what would most assuredly be an inevitable war. Only 8 of those 99 men had fathers who themselves were college educated. Yet all 99 men were from the new economic elite in Great Britain while not part of its aristocracy.
These 99 men were proficient in the literature of the Republic of Rome. They studied the best-known
works of Latin literature, history, and philosophy, with some Greek works
thrown in for the more advanced students.
There was new skeptical probing of the thinking coming out of Scottish universities where the new attitudes of freedom of religion, of liberty, of freedom and the proper relationship of government to man.
Because the Founders failed to find a way to address the entire issue of race-based chattel slavery, less than a century later, the nation they built would fracture into Civil War and undergo a long and halting reconstruction that continues even today.
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