America |
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 [George III]
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.
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 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
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 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 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 Honor.
What kind of men were they? Twenty five were lawyers or jurists. Eleven
were merchants. Nine were farmers or large plantation owners. One was a
teacher, one a musician, and one a printer. These were men of means and
education who launched the Ship of State which you and I have inherited.
Yet they signed the Declaration of Independence, knowing full well that
the penalty could be death if they were captured.
When these courageous men signed, they pledged their lives, their
fortunes, and their sacred honor to the cause of freedom and independence.
In the face of the advancing British Army, the Continental Congress
fled from Philadelphia to Baltimore on December 12, 1776. It was an
especially anxious time for John Hancock, the President, as his wife had
just given birth to a baby girl. Due to the complications stemming from
the trip to Baltimore, the child lived only a few months.
William Ellery's signing at the risk of his fortune proved only too
realistic. In December 1776, during three days of British occupation of
Newport, Rhode Island, Ellery's house was burned, and all his property
destroyed.
Richard Stockton, a New Jersey State Supreme Court Justice, had rushed
back to his estate near Princeton after signing the Declaration of
Independence to find that his wife and children were living like refugees
with friends. They had been betrayed by a Tory sympathizer who also
revealed Stockton's own whereabouts. British troops pulled him from his
bed one night, beat him and threw him in jail where he almost starved to
death. When he was finally released, he went home to find his estate had
been looted, his possessions burned, and his horses stolen. Judge Stockton
had been so badly treated in prison that his health was ruined and he died
before the war's end. His surviving family had to live the remainder of
their lives off charity.
Carter Braxton was a wealthy planter and trader. One by one his ships
were captured by the British navy. He loaned a large sum of money to the
American cause; it was never paid back. He was forced to sell his
plantations and mortgage his other properties to pay his debts.
Thomas McKean was so hounded by the British that he had to move his
family almost constantly. He served in the Continental Congress without
pay, and kept his family in hiding.
Vandals or soldiers or both looted the properties of Clymer, Hall,
Harrison, Hopkinson and Livingston. Seventeen lost everything they owned.
Thomas Heyward, Jr., Edward Rutledge and Arthur Middleton, all of South
Carolina, were captured by the British during the Charleston Campaign in
1780. They were kept in dungeons at the St. Augustine Prison until
exchanged a year later.
At the Battle of Yorktown, Thomas Nelson, Jr. noted that the British
General Cornwallis had taken over the family home for his headquarters.
Nelson urged General George Washington to open fire on his own home. This
was done, and the home was destroyed. Nelson later died bankrupt.
Francis Lewis also had his home and properties destroyed. The enemy
jailed his wife for two months, and that and other hardships from the war
so affected her health that she died only two years later.
"Honest John" Hart, a New Jersey farmer, was driven from his wife's
bedside when she was near death. Their thirteen children fled for their
lives. Hart's fields and his grist mill were laid waste. For over a year
he eluded capture by hiding in nearby forests. He never knew where his bed
would be the next night and often slept in caves. When he finally returned
home, he found that his wife had died, his children disappeared, and his
farm and stock were completely destroyed. Hart himself died in 1779
without ever seeing any of his family again.
Such were the stories and sacrifices typical of those who risked
everything to sign the Declaration of Independence. These men were not
wild-eyed, rabble-rousing ruffians. They were soft-spoken men of means and
education. They had security, but they valued liberty more. Standing tall,
straight, and unwavering, they pledged:
"For the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the
protection of the Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other, our
lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."
This essay was obtained from a Teenage Republican
(TAR) publication.