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13 COLONIES READY TO RULE THEMSELVES
Declaration of Independence 1776: Transcript
The Continental Congress passed the U.S. Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.
By means of this document, 13 British colonies in North America
declared their independence from Great Britain. The 13 colonies, now
states, were: Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Massachusetts,
Maryland, New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, North Carolina,
Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Virginia.
READ MORE ABOUT THE DECLARATION
Here follows the full transcript of the Declaration of
Independence of 1776.
The Unanimous
Declaration of the Thirteen United States of
America
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 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 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 mean time exposed to all
the dangers of invasion from without, and
convulsions within.—He has endeavoured 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 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 harrass 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:—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
without our Consent:—For depriving us in
many cases, 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 neighbouring 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 Colonies:—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.—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
compleat the works of death, desolation and
tyranny, already begun with circumstances of
Cruelty & 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 endeavoured 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 Brittish
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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Signers of the Declaration of
Independence |
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Connecticut
Samuel Huntington
Roger Sherman
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott
Delaware
Thomas McKean
George Read
Caesar Rodney
Georgia
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton |
Maryland
Charles Carroll
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Massachusetts
John Adams
Samuel Adams
Elbridge Gerry
John Hancock
Robert Treat Paine
New
Hampshire
Josiah Bartlett
Matthew Thornton
William Whipple |
New
Jersey
Abraham Clark
John Hart
Francis Hopkinson
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
New
York
William Floyd
Francis Lewis
Philip Livingston
Lewis Morris
North
Carolina
Joseph Hewes
William Hooper
John Penn |
Pennsylvania
George Clymer
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Morris
John Morton
George Ross
Benjamin Rush
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
Rhode
Island
William Ellery
Stephen Hopkins |
South
Carolina
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton
Edward Rutledge
Virginia
Carter Braxton
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
George Wythe |
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