future; he saw, in imagination, his country the abode of a free and happy people, and he was content; his hand trembled not, as he wrote, America, Free and Independent. Living as we now do in a free land, far removed from all the troubles and vicissitudes of war, in the full enjoyment of liberties, which seem as necessary to our existence as the air we breathe, we can hardly conceive of the thoughts which must have crowded on the mind of Jefferson, while penning the Declaration of Independence. A man of weaker mind, or less firmness and decision of character, would have been overwhelmed, and have shrunk in dismay from the task. But Jefferson did not disappoint the high expectations which had been formed of him. He went to his task with the full assurance that his cause was the cause of liberty; and he rose from it confirmed in the resolution, to die, if necessary, in its defence. The Declaration of Independence is one of the most remarkable papers ever written; and did no other effort of the mind of its author exist, that alone would be sufficient to stamp his name with immortality. The Declaration, as drafted by Mr. Jefferson, was by him submitted to his colleagues, and, after a few unimportant alterations made by them, was reported by the committee, and read on Friday, the twenty-eighth of June. The original motion made by the Virginia delegation, namely, that Congress should declare the colonies free, sovereign, and independent, having been disposed of in the affirmative, on Tuesday, the second of July, by a vote of all the States except New-York, (whose members did not consider themselves authorized by their instructions to vote on this question,) Congress proceeded to a consideration of the Declaration, which, after being debated during the greater parts of the second, third, and fourth of July, and after some passages which were thought objectionable had been stricken out, and some other alterations made, was finally agreed to by the House, and signed on the evening of the fourth by all the members present, except Mr. Dickinson. The Declaration of Independence is so intimately connected with the name of Thomas Jefferson, that any sketch of his life would seem imperfect without it. We therefore present it as originally reported by him, together with the alterations of Congress. 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 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. * The parts struck out by Congress are printed in italics, and enclosed in brackets; and the parts added are placed in the margin, or in a concurrent column. We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with [inherent and] inalienable 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 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 [begun at a distinguished period and] pursuing invariably the same object, evinces à 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 [expunge] their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain, is a history of [unremitting] injuries and usurpations, [among which appears no solitary fact to contradict the uniform tenor of the rest, but all have] in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. Το 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 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 legis lature, 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 representatives houses repeatedly [and certain alter repeated all having obstructed by continually] 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 mean time, 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 [suffered] the administration of justice, [totally to cease in some of these states,] 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 the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of new offices, [by a selfassumed power] and sent hither swarms of new officers, to harass our people, and eat out their substance. He has kept among us in times of peace, standing armies [and ships of war] 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 constitutions, 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 with in many cases out our consent; for depriving us [ ] 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 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 into these [states;] 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. colonies by declaring He has abdicated government here, [withdrawing his govus out of his ernors, and declaring us out of his allegiance and protection.] 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, [] 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 ous ages, and fall themselves by their hands. scarcely paralleled in the most barbar totally do He has [] endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of excited our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known mestic insurrule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all rections ages, sexes, and conditions [of existence.] a mong us, and [He has incited treasonable insurrections of our fellow- has citizens, with the allurements of forfeiture, and confiscation of our property. He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty, in the persons of a distant people, who never offended him, сарtivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market, where men should be bought and 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 on 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 only by repeated injuries. 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 scarcely believe, that the hardiness of one man adventured, within the short compass of twelve years only, to lay a foundation so broad and so undisguised for tyranny, over a people fostered and fixed in principles of freedom.] free 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] jurisdiction an unwar over [these our states.] We have reminded them of the rantable us. have circumstances of our emigration and settlement here, [no one of which could warrant so strange a pretension: that these were effected at the expense of our own blood and 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 and 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 and magand we have nanimity, [as well as to] the ties of our common kindred conjured to disavow these usurpations which [were likely to] interthem by rupt our connexion and correspondence. They too have would inevi- been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity, tably [and 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, reestablished 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 and foreign mercenaries, to invade and destroy us. These facts have given the last stab to agonizing affection, and manly spirit bids us to renounce forever these unfeeling brethren. We must endeavor to forget our former love for them, and hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends. We might have been a free and a great people together; but a communication of grandeur and of freedom, it seems, is below their dignity. Be it so, since they must will have it. The road to happiness and to glory is open We will tread it apart from them, and] acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our [eternal] separation [ ]! We therefore and hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies war, in peace friends. in to us too. We therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in general Congress assembled, do in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these [states reject and renounce all allegiance and subjection to the Kings of Great Britain, and all others, who may hereafter claim by, through, or under them; we utterly dissolve all political connexion which may here 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 |
