It appearing in the course of these debates that the colonies
of N. York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and South
Carolina were not yet matured for falling from the parent stem, but
that they were fast advancing to that state, it was thought most
prudent to wait a while for them, and to postpone the final decision
to July 1. but that this might occasion as little delay as possible a
committee was appointed to prepare a declaration of independence.
The commee were J. Adams, Dr. Franklin, Roger Sherman, Robert R.
Livingston & myself. Committees were also appointed at the same time
to prepare a plan of confederation for the colonies, and to state the
terms proper to be proposed for foreign alliance. The committee for
drawing the declaration of Independence desired me to do it. It was
accordingly done, and being approved by them, I reported it to the
house on Friday the 28th of June when it was read and ordered to lie
on the table. On Monday, the 1st of July the house resolved itself
into a commee of the whole & resumed the consideration of the
original motion made by the delegates of Virginia, which being again
debated through the day, was carried in the affirmative by the votes
of N. Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, N. Jersey,
Maryland, Virginia, N. Carolina, & Georgia. S. Carolina and
Pennsylvania voted against it. Delaware having but two members
present, they were divided. The delegates for New York declared they
were for it themselves & were assured their constituents were for it,
but that their instructions having been drawn near a twelvemonth
before, when reconciliation was still the general object, they were
enjoined by them to do nothing which should impede that object. They
therefore thought themselves not justifiable in voting on either
side, and asked leave to withdraw from the question, which was given
them. The commee rose & reported their resolution to the house. Mr.
Edward Rutledge of S. Carolina then requested the determination might
be put off to the next day, as he believed his colleagues, tho' they
disapproved of the resolution, would then join in it for the sake of
unanimity. The ultimate question whether the house would agree to
the resolution of the committee was accordingly postponed to the next
day, when it was again moved and S. Carolina concurred in voting for
it. In the meantime a third member had come post from the Delaware
counties and turned the vote of that colony in favour of the
resolution. Members of a different sentiment attending that morning
from Pennsylvania also, their vote was changed, so that the whole 12
colonies who were authorized to vote at all, gave their voices for
it; and within a few days, the convention of N. York approved of it
and thus supplied the void occasioned by the withdrawing of her
delegates from the vote.
Congress proceeded the same day to consider the declaration of
Independance which had been reported & lain on the table the Friday
preceding, and on Monday referred to a commee of the whole. The
pusillanimous idea that we had friends in England worth keeping terms
with, still haunted the minds of many. For this reason those
passages which conveyed censures on the people of England were struck
out, lest they should give them offence. The clause too, reprobating
the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in
complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted
to restrain the importation of slaves, and who on the contrary still
wished to continue it. Our northern brethren also I believe felt a
little tender under those censures; for tho' their people have very
few slaves themselves yet they had been pretty considerable carriers
of them to others. The debates having taken up the greater parts of
the 2d 3d & 4th days of July were, in the evening of the last, closed
the declaration was reported by the commee, agreed to by the house
and signed by every member present except Mr. Dickinson. As the
sentiments of men are known not only by what they receive, but what
they reject also, I will state the form of the declaration as
originally reported. The parts struck out by Congress shall be
distinguished by a black line drawn under them; & those inserted by
them shall be placed in the margin or in a concurrent column.
[Editors note: text in boldface was removed for the final
version of the Declaration, and text in italics was added].
A Declaration by the Representatives of the
United States of America, in General
Congress Assembled.
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 &
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 inherent
and [certain] inalienable rights; that among these are life,
liberty, & 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 abolish it, & to institute new government, laying it's
foundation on such principles, & organizing it's powers in such form,
as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety & happiness.
Prudence indeed will dictate that governments long established should
not be changed for light & 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
& usurpations begun at a distinguished period and 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, & to provide new guards for their future security.
Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; & such is now
the necessity which constrains them to expunge [alter] their former
systems of government. The history of the present king of Great
Britain is a history of unremitting [repeated] injuries &
usurpations, among which appears no solitary fact to contradict the
uniform tenor of the rest but all have [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 for the truth of which
we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.
He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome &
necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate &
pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his
assent should be obtained; & 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, & 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 &
continually 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 & 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 migrations
hither, & raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
He has suffered [obstructed] the administration of justice
totally to cease in some of these states [by] refusing his [assent
to laws for establishing judiciary powers].
He has made our judges dependant on his will alone, for the
tenure of their offices, & the amount & paiment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of new offices by a self assumed
power and sent hither swarms of new officers to harass our people
and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us in times of peace standing armies and
ships of war without the consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the military independant of, &
superior to the civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction
foreign to our constitutions & 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 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 neighboring
province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging
it's boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit
instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these states
[colonies]; for taking away our charters, abolishing our most
valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our
governments; for suspending our own legislatures, & declaring
themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases
whatsoever.
He has abdicated government here withdrawing his governors,
and declaring us out of his allegiance & protection. [by declaring
us out of his protection, and waging war against us.]
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns,
& destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign
mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation & tyranny
already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy [ ] [scarcely
paralleled in the most barbarous ages, & 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 & brethren, or to fall themselves by
their hands.
He has [excited domestic insurrection among us, & 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, & conditions of existence.
He has incited treasonable insurrections of our
fellow-citizens, with the allurements of forfeiture & confiscation of
our property.
He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating
it's most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a
distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them
into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in
their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobium
of INFIDEL powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great
Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought
& sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every
legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable
commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of
distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in
arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived
them, by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded them: thus
paying off former crimes committed against the LIBERTIES of one
people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the LIVES
of another.
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 injuries.
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 who
mean to be free. Future ages will scarcely believe that the
hardiness of one man adventured, within the short compass of twelve
years only, to lay a foundation so broad & so undisguised for tyranny
over a people fostered & fixed in principles of freedom.
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 a [an unwarrantable] jurisdiction over these
our states [us]. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our
emigration & settlement here, no one of which could warrant so
strange a pretension: that these were effected at the expense of our
own blood & treasure, unassisted by the wealth or the strength of
Great Britain: that in constituting indeed our several forms of
government, we had adopted one common king, thereby laying a
foundation for perpetual league & amity with them: but that
submission to their parliament was no part of our constitution, nor
ever in idea, if history may be credited: and, we [ ] [have]
appealed to their native justice and magnanimity as well as to [and
we have conjured them by] the ties of our common kindred to disavow
these usurpations which were likely to [would inevitably] interrupt
our connection and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the
voice of justice & of consanguinity, and when occasions have been
given them, by the regular course of their laws, of removing from
their councils the disturbers of our harmony, they have, by their
free election, re-established them in power. At this very time too
they are permitting their chief magistrate to send over not only
soldiers of our common blood, but Scotch & foreign mercenaries to
invade & destroy us. These facts have given the last stab to
agonizing affection, and manly spirit bids us to renounce forever
these unfeeling brethren. We must [We must therefore] endeavor to
forget our former love for them, and hold them as we hold the rest of
mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends. We might have been a free
and a great people together; but a communication of grandeur & of
freedom it seems is below their dignity. Be it so, since they will
have it. The road to happiness & to glory is open to us too. We
will tread it apart from them, and acquiesce in the necessity which
denounces our eternal separation [ ] [and hold them as we hold the
rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.]!
We therefore the representatives We therefore the representatives
of the United States of of the United States of
America in General Congress America in General Congress
assembled do in the name & assembled, appealing to the
by authority of the good supreme judge of the world
people of these states reject for the rectitude of our
& renounce all allegiance & intentions, do in the name, & by
subjection to the kings of the authority of the good
Great Britain & all others people of these colonies,
who may hereafter claim by, solemnly publish & declare that
through or under them: we these united colonies are &
utterly dissolve all political of right ought to be free &
connection which may independent states; that they
heretofore have subsisted are absolved from all allegiance
between us & the people or to the British crown,
parliament of Great Britain: and that all political
& finally we do assert & connection between them & the
declare these colonies to be free state of Great Britain is, &
& independent states, & that ought to be, totally
as free & independent states, dissolved; & that as free &
they have full power to levy independent states they have
war, conclude peace, contract full power to levy war,
alliances, establish commerce, conclude peace, contract
& to do all other acts & alliances, establish commerce &
things which independent to do all other acts & things
states may of right do. which independent states
may of right do.
And for the support of And for the support of this
this declaration we mutually declaration, with a firm
pledge to each other our reliance on the protection of
lives, our fortunes, & our divine providence we mutually
sacred honor. pledge to each other our
lives, our fortunes, & our
sacred honor.
The Declaration thus signed on the 4th, on paper was engrossed
on parchment, & signed again on the 2d. of August.
Some erroneous statements of the proceedings on the declaration
of independence having got before the public in latter times, Mr.
Samuel A. Wells asked explanations of me, which are given in my
letter to him of May 12. 19. before and now again referred to. I
took notes in my place while these things were going on, and at their
close wrote them out in form and with correctness and from 1 to 7 of
the two preceding sheets are the originals then written; as the two
following are of the earlier debates on the Confederation, which I
took in like manner. |
