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Great
Essays
The Declaration of
Independence: A Transcription
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
EDITORIAL COMMENT:
Without this very brazen act, on the part of a group of very
principled leaders there's a good chance our Country would never
have come into being as we know it today.
Have you ever wondered what happened to those men
who committed treason against England by signing this
Declaration of Independence?
Five signers were captured by the British as
traitors, and tortured before they died. Twelve had their homes
ransacked and burned. Two lost their sons in the Revolutionary
Army, another had two sons captured. Nine of the 56 fought and
died from wounds or the hardships of the Revolutionary War.
What kind of men were they?
Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists, Eleven were merchants,
nine were farmers and large plantation owners, all men of means
and well educated.
They signed the Declaration of Independence
knowing full well that the penalty would be death if they were
captured. They signed and they pledged their lives, their
fortunes, and their sacred honor.
Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and
trader, saw his ships swept from the seas by the British navy.
He sold his home and properties to pay his debts, and died in
rags.
Thomas McKeam was so hounded by the British that
he was forced to move his family almost constantly. He served in
Congress without pay, and his family was kept in hiding. His
possessions were taken from him, and poverty was his reward.
Vandals or soldiers or both, looted the
properties of Ellery, Clymex, Hall, Walton, Gwinnett, Heyward,
Ruttledge, and Middleton.
At the Battle of Yorktown, Thomas Nelson jr. ,
noted that the British General Cornwallis, had taken over the
Nelson home for his headquarters. The owner quietly urged
General George Washington to open fire, which was done. The home
was destroyed, and Nelson died bankrupt.
Francis Lewis had his home and properties
destroyed. The enemy jailed his wife, and she died within a few
months.
John Hart was driven from his wife's bedside as
she was dying. Their 13 children fled for their lives. His
fields and grist mill were laid waste. For more than a year he
lived in forest and caves, returning home after the war to find
his wife dead, and his children vanished. A few weeks later he
died of exhaustion and a broken heart.
Norris and Livingston suffered similar fates.
Such were the stories and sacrifices of the
American Revolution. These were not wild eyed, rabble-rousing
ruffians. They were soft-spoken men of means and education. They
had security, but they valued liberty more.
(Author Unknown)
They gave us an independent America. Can we keep
it?
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 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 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 mean
time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without,
and convulsions within.
He has 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 harrass 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 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
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 compleat the works of death, desolation and
tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty &
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
Brittish 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 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.
The 56 signatures on the Declaration appear
in the positions indicated:
Column 1
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton
Column 2
North Carolina:
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton
Column 3
Massachusetts:
John Hancock
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
Column 4
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
Column 5
New York:
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark
Column 6
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Massachusetts:
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott
New Hampshire:
Matthew Thornton
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