Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence during three weeks in June 1776. This is the text of the original draft he wrote. After he wrote it, he gave it to Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, fellow members on the Committee of Five, that was appointed to write the declaration. After they revised it, it was submitted to the Continental Congress for their approval. Congress made further revisions, most notably removing the passage forbidding slavery.
Read
the text of the revised Declaration of Independence here. This
is the version that was revised by Benjamin Franklin and John Adams. It
is also called the Rough Draft of the Declaration of Independence.
Read
the final version of the Declaration of Independence that was approved
by the Continental Congress
Go to a list of Thomas Jefferson Facts here.
A Declaration of the Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
in General Congress assembled.
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a people to
advance from that subordination in which they have hitherto remained,
& to assume among the powers of the earth the equal &
independent station to which the laws of nature & 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 change.
We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are
created equal & independent, that from that equal creation they
derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the
preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of
happiness; that to secure these ends, governments are instituted among men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that
whenever any form of government shall become destructive of these ends,
it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, & to
institute new government, laying it's foundation on such principles
& organising 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
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 & usurpations,
begun at a distinguished period, & pursuing invariably the same object,
evinces a design to subject them to arbitrary power, 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 their former systems of government. the history of his
present majesty, is a history of unremitting injuries and usurpations,
among which no one fact stands single or solitary to contradict the
uniform tenor of the rest, all of which have 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 and 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; and when so suspended, he has neglected utterly 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, a right inestimable to them, formidable to
tyrants alone;
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 space of time
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, & 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 the
administration of justice totally to cease in some of these colonies,
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 amount of their salaries;
he has erected a multitude of new offices by a self-assumed power,
& sent hither swarms of officers to harrass our people & eat out
their substance;
he has kept among us in times of peace standing
armies & ships of war;
he has affected to render the military,
independent of & superior to the civil power;
he has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our
constitutions and unacknoleged by our laws; giving his assent to their
pretended acts of legislation, for quartering large bodies of armed
troops among us;
for protecting them by a mock-trial from
punishment for any murders 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 of the benefits of trial by jury;
for transporting us beyond seas to be tried for
pretended offences;
for taking away our charters, & 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, & declaring us out of his allegiance &
protection;
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 & perfidy unworthy the head of a
civilized nation;
he 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
in our fellow-subjects, 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
& 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 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 & 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, & murdering the people upon 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 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 people who mean to be free. future ages will scarce believe that
the hardiness of one man, adventured within the short compass of 12
years only, on so many acts of tyranny without a mask, over a people
fostered & fixed in principles of liberty.
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 jurisdiction
over these our states. 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 expence 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 appealed to their native justice
& magnanimity, as well as to the ties of our common kindred to disavow
these usurpations which were likely to interrupt our correspondence
& connection. they too have been deaf to the voice of justice
& of consanguinity, & 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 &
deluge us in blood. 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 & 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 glory & happiness is open
to us too; we will climb it in a separate state, and acquiesce in the
necessity which pronounces our everlasting Adieu!
We therefore the representatives of the United States of America in General Congress
assembled do, in the name & by authority of the good people of
these states, reject and renounce a11 allegiance & subjection
to the kings of Great Britain & all others who may hereafter claim
by, through, or under them; we utterly dissolve & break off a11
political connection which may have heretofore subsisted between us
& the people or parliament of Great Britain; and finally we do
assert and declare these a colonies to be free and independent states,
and that as free & independent states they shall hereafter have
power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish
commerce, & to do all other acts and things which independent
states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration we
mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, & our
sacred honour.
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