Declaration of Independence.
It was very important to have Lee's resolution for independence, offered June 7, 1776, prefaced by a preamble that should clearly declare the causes which impelled the representatives of the people to adopt it. To avoid loss of time, a committee was appointed (June 11) to prepare such declaration. The committee was composed of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston. Mr. Lee having been called home before the appointment of the committee, Mr. Jefferson was put in his place. He was requested by the committee, after discussing the topics, to make a draft of a declaration of independence. It was discussed in committee, amended very slightly, and finally reported. Debates upon it were long and animated. There was some opposition to voting for independence at all, and it was considerably amended. It was evident from the beginning that a majority of the colonies would vote for independence (the vote in Congress was by colonies), but it was important that the vote should be unanimous.The declaration was warmly debated on the day (July 2) when the resolution was passed, and also on the 3d. Meanwhile news came of the arrival of a large British armament, under the brothers Howe, at Sandy Hook. Immediate and united action was essential. McKean, one of the two representatives of Delaware present, burning with a desire to have the vote of his colony recorded in the affirmative, sent an express after the third delegate, Caesar Rodney. He was 80 miles from Philadelphia. Ten minutes after receiving McKean's message Rodney was in the saddle, and, riding all night, he reached the floor of Congress (July 4) just in time to secure the vote of Delaware in favor of independence. All three of the delegates from Delaware voted for the declaration. The vote of Pennsylvania was also secured, a majority of its seven delegates being in favor of the measure; and on the 4th of July, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the unanimous vote of the thirteen colonies.
On Thursday, July 4, 1776, agreeable to the order of the day, Congress resolved itself into a committee of the whole to consider the declaration, President John Hancock in the chair. The secretary, Benjamin Harrison, reported that the committee had agreed upon a declaration, which was read and adopted as follows:
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| House in which Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. |
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable 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 a 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 formal system 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 operations 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 [37] 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 danger of invasion from without and convulsions within.
He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose
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| Independence Hall, Philadelphia. |
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 time 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; [38]
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| Garden House in which Jefferson and others celebrated the passage of the Declaration |
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 benefits of trial by jury:
For transporting us beyond seas, to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free system of English law 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 into these colonies: For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our government: 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
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| Table and chair used at the signing of the Declaration of Independence. |
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 among us, and has endeavored 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 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 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 made by their legislatures 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 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 good 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 states 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.
Signed by order and in behalf of the Congress.
New Hampshire. Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton.
Massachusetts Bay. Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry.
Rhode Island, Etc. 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.
North Carolina. William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn.
Georgia. Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton.
Pennsylvania. Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamiin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, William Paca, George Ross.
Delaware. Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean. [40]
Maryland. Samuel Chase, James Wilson, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton.
Virginia. George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton.
South Carolina. Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton.
