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History
: Jefferson's Declaration
Thomas Jefferson's vision of Independence
Thomas Jefferson copied for James Madison his notes, an
account of the events in the Second Continental Congress surrounding the
adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Included in
Jefferson's autobiography is the unedited Declaration—the version Jefferson wanted adopted—before Congress
began amending and editing.
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; and those inserted by them shall be placed in the margin [Here in brackets, boldfaced - Ed.] or in a concurrent column.
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 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] inherent and 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 new government, laying it's foundation on such principles, and
organising it's 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 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,
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] expunge their
former systems of government. the history of the present king of Great Britain
is a history of [repeated] unremitting
injuries and 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 wholsome 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 accomodation 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 and
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 mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasions 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 migrations hither, and raising the
conditions of new appropriations of lands.
he has [obstructed]
suffered 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, and the
amount and 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 harrass 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 independent of and
superior to the civil power.
he has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction
foreign to our constitutions 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 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 [colonies] states; 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] withdrawing
his governors and declaring us out of his allegiance and protection
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 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 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 of existence.
he has incited treasonable insurrections of our
fellow-citizens with the allurements of forfeiture and 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 and carrying them into
slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation
thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the
warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a
market where Men should be bought and 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 and so undisguised for tyranny over a people
fostered and 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 [an unwarrantable]
a jurisdiction over [us] these
our states. we have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration
and settlement here no one of which could warrant so strange a pretension.
that these were effected at the expence of our own blood and 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 and 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 [and
we have conjured them by] as well as to
the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations which [would
inevitably] were likely to
interrupt our connection and correspondence. they too have been deaf to the
voice of justice and 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 souldiers of our common blood, but Scotch and foreign
mercenaries to invade and destroy us. These facts have given the last stab to
agonizing affection, and manly spirit bids us to renounce for ever these
unfeeling brethren. we must endeavor to forget our former love for them, and to
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 and of freedom it seems is below their dignity. be it so, since they
will have it. the road to happiness and to glory is open to us too. we will
tread it apart from them, and [we must therefore] 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 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] states reject
and renounce all allegiance and subjection to the kings of Great Britain and
all others who may hereafter claim by, through, or under them: we utterly
dissolve all political connection which may heretofore have subsisted between
us, and the people or parliament of Great Britain: and finally we do assert and
declare these colonies to be free and independant states solemnly publish
and declare that these United colonies are and of right ought to be free and
independant 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 independant
states they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances,
establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independant
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.
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Historic Triangle