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 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. 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.

New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

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

Source: The Pennsylvania Packet, July 8, 1776