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 from
              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 honor. 

                   Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual
                   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: Richard Stockton, John
                   Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John
                   Hart, Abraham Clark 

                   Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin
                   Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton,
                   George Clymer, James Smith, George
                   Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross 

                   Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read,
                   Thomas McKean 

                   Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca,
                   Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

                   Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry
                   Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison,
                   Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee,
                   Carter Braxton 

                   North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph
                   Hewes, John Penn 

                   South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas
                   Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur
                   Middleton 

                   Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall,
                   George Walton.