The First Draft of the Declaration of
Independence
Year: june 28, 1776
American State Papers
Kolbe Library
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A Declaration by the Representatives
of 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, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the equal and
independent 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 change
2 We hold these truths to be [sacred and undeniable]
selfevident, that all men are created equal and independent; that from that
equal creation they derive in rights inherent and inalienables, among which
are the preservation of life, and liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that
to secure these ends, governments 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, and to institute new government, laying its
foundation on such principles and organizing it's 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 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 and usurpations, begun at a distinguished period, and
pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to [subject] reduce them
to arbitrary power, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such
government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --
3 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 his present majesty is a history
of unremitting injuries and usurpations, among which no fact stands single or
solitary to contradict 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 public good:
4 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 neglected utterly
to attend to them.
5 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:
6 He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly,
for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
7 [he has dissolved]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 meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from
without, and convulsions within:
8 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 conditions of new appropriations 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 dependent on his will alone,
for the tenure of their offices, and the amount of their salaries.
he has erected a multitude of new offices by a
self-assumed power, and sent hither swarms of officers to harrass our people,
and eat out their substance.
he has kept among us, in times of peace, standing
armies and ships of war:
he has affected to render the military, independent
of and superior to civil power:
9 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 pretended acts of legislation, for quartering large
bodies of armed troops among us;
10 for protecting them, by 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 of the benefits of trial by jury;
for transporting us beyond seas to be tried for
pretended offenses;
for taking away our charters, 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, withdrawing his
governors, and declaring us out of his alegiance and protection;
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 compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny,
already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy unworthy the head of a
civilized nation:
11 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 and conditions of existence:
he has incited treasonable insurrections of our
fellow citizens with the allurements of forfeiture and confiscation of our
property:
12 he has waged cruel war against human nature itself,
violating it's most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a
distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into
slavery in another hemispere, or to incure miserable death in their
transportation hither. 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 [determining to keep open a market where MEN
should be bought and sold]: 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 had 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.
13 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
people who mean to be free. future ages will scarce believe that the hardiness
of one man, adventured within the short compass of twelve years only, on so
many acts of tyranny without a mask, over a people fostered and fixed in
principles of liberty.
14 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 these our states. we
have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here,
no one of which could warrant so strange a pretension: that these were
effected at the expence of our own blood and treasure, unassisted by the
wealth or the strength of Great Britain: that in constituing 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 magnanimity, as
well as to the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which
were likely to interrupt our correspondence and connections. they too have
been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity, 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
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 and foreign mercenaries to invade and deluge us in blood. 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 will have it: the road to [glory and]
happiness [and to glory] is open to us too; we will climb it apart from them
[in a seperate state] and acquiesce in the necessity which denounces
[pronounces][ our [everlasting Adieu!] eternal separation!
15 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 the
allegiance and subjection to the kinds of Great Britain and all others whe may
herafter claim by, through, or under them; we utterly dissolve and break off
all political connection which may have heretofore subsisted between us and
the people or parliament of Great Britain; and finally we do assert and
declare these colonies to be free and independent states, and that as free and
independent states they shall herafter 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 we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our
sacred honor.
June 28, 1776
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