Declaration of Independence (Text)
1776
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.[AU1]
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
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hen 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[BU2] [AU3].
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.[AU4] 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 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, 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. [BU5]
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. [BU6]
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. [BU7]
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 migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.[AU8]
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
[BU9] 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.[AU10]
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[AU11]:
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.[BU12]
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[BU13] , 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,[AU14] whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.[AU15]
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.
. And for the 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.[AU16] 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.[BU17] [AU18]
[AU1] The first international recognition of the Declaration of Independence was by France in 1778
[BU2]Nations around the world, especially former colonies, came into being through Declarations of Independence stating causes in support of their actions. The American Declaration of Independence became a model for emerging nations as the American Revolution was the first successful independence movement that broke the ties of colonialism.)
Echo: Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to Thomas Mann Randolph, May 30, 1790, that "[John] Locke's little book [Second Treatise, of Civil Government, 1690] is perfect as far as it goes." Locke wrote, after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 that established parliamentary supremacy in England, that governments derive their legitimacy from the consent of the people. People establish government to protect their natural rights to life, liberty, and property. Governments cannot take away these natural rights, nor can they abrogate the social contract under which they govern with the consent of the people. Jefferson's words in the Declaration of Independence directly reflect John Locke's political views which resonated throughout the world as the embodiment of freedom
Influences:
The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 is an example of many declarations that copied Jefferson’s language. It proclaimed:
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights….
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person….
Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.
The French Revolution produced the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789, the preamble of which proclaimed:
“The representative of the French people… have determined to set forth in a solemn declaration the natural, inalienable and sacred rights of man….
Article 1. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights….
6. Law is the expression of the general will. Every citizen has a right to participate personally or through his representative in its formation.
[BU6]The principle of representative government is a core component of democractic constitutions throughout the world. Sovereignty resides in the people. Governments cannot legitimately rule by the devine right of Kings, or in modern terms, by rulers that the people do not control.
[BU7]John Locke proclaimed in his Second Treatise, of Civil Government (1690), that a Monarch's interference with representative legislatures was a just cause for the dissolution of government. This principle became in one form or another the basis of Revolutions to dissolve arbitrary governments, especially colonial powers.
[AU8]This refers to the British Crown’s efforts to limit White Americans’ expropriation and settlement of Indian lands by the Proclamation of 1763 and the Quebec Act of 1774
[BU9]A basic tenet of English government since at least the 16th century is that justice requires an independent judiciary. Every constitutional government in the world has created an independent judicial authority
[BU12]United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948):
(1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
[BU13]One of President Woodrow Wilson Fourteen Points in a speech
before Congress, April 18, 1918:
II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants.
[AU14]The British Crown’s efforts to limit settler encroachment of Indian lands gave rise to the widespread rumor that the Crown and the Indians were natural allies against White Americans. In this vein Thomas Paine’s Common Sense had already (January 1776) declared that there were “tens of thousands [of White Americans] who would think it glorious to expel from the continent that barbarous and hellish power, which hath stirred up the Indians and Negroes to destroy us.”
[AU15]Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration of Independence contained extensive complaints about the slave trade. King George III was denounced because “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, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, 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 and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce.” These portions of the draft were deleted by the Continental Congress.
Echo: the general structure of the document (list of grievances, documentation of efforts at peaceful resolution, declaration of independence) closely follows the Dutch Declaration of Independence from Spain (July 26, 1581). Thomas Jefferson owned several books (now in the Library of Congress) on the revolt of the Netherlands (1567-1648), but there is no direct evidence of copying.
[BU17]International law recognizes the right of all peoples to self-determination, a right the Declaration of Independence expressed. The United Nations Charter and numerous other international covenants and treaties recognize the right of self-determination. The Declaration of Independence was a declaration of freedom from colonial oppression that became a model for the world
[AU18]In international law, a documents like this is known as a Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI).
Influence: Other successful UDIs include Haiti (November 29, 1803), Brazil (September 7, 1822), Romania (May 10, 1877) and Indonesia (August 17, 1945). Unsuccessful UDIs include the United Maori Tribes of New Zealand (October 28, 1835), the Philippines (June 12, 1898) and Katanga province in the Republic of Congo (July 11, 1960)