Read Aloud!

DECLARATION OF
INDEPENDENCE

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 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 Natures 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 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.

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 migrations 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 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
benefit 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 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. 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.

— John Hancock

New Hampshire:

Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple,
Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:

John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams,
Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:

Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:

Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington,
William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:

William Floyd, Philip Livingston,
Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey: