Declaration of Independence
(Adopted in Congress 4 July 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 bonds 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 form the consent of the governed. That whenever any 
form of government becomes destructive to 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 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 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 harass our people, and eat out their substance.
   He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without 
the consent of our legislature.
   He has affected to render the military independent of and superior 
to 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 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 offenses:

   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 in 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, burned 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 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 attention 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. 
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 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 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