If it  were possible  for men  who exercise  their reason to be-
lieve, that the divine Author  of our existence intended a  part
of the human race  to hold an absolute  property in, and an  un-
bounded power over others,  marked out by his  infinite goodness
and wisdom, as  the objects of  a legal domination  never right-
fully resistible, however severe and oppressive, the inhabitants
of these colonies might at least require from the parliament  of
Great-Britain some evidence,  that this dreadful  authority over
them, has been granted  to that body.   But a reverence for  our
great Creator, principles of humanity, and the dictates of  com-
mon sense, must convince all those who reflect upon the subject,
that government was  instituted to promote  the welfare of  man-
kind, and ought  to be administered  for the attainment  of that
end.  The legislature of Great- Britain, however, stimulated  by
an inordinate passion  for a power  not only unjustifiable,  but
which they know to be peculiarly reprobated by the very  consti-
tution of that kingdom, and desperate of success in any mode  of
contest, where  regard should  be had  to truth,  law, or right,
have at length, deserting those, attempted to effect their cruel
and impolitic purpose of  enslaving these colonies by  violence,
and have  thereby rendered  it necessary  for us  to close  with
their last appeal  from reason to  arms.  -Yet,  however blinded
that assembly may  be, by their  intemperate rage for  unlimited
domination, so to slight justice and the opinion of mankind,  we
esteem ourselves bound by obligations of respect to the rest  of
the world, to make known the justice of our cause.

Our  forefathers,  inhabitants  of  the island of Great-Britain,
left their native land, to seek on these shores a residence  for
civil and religious freedom.  At the expense of their blood,  at
the hazard of  their fortunes, without  the least charge  to the
country from  which they  removed, by  unceasing labour,  and an
unconquerable spirit, they  effected settlements in  the distant
and inhospitable wilds of America, then filled with numerous and
warlike  nations  of  barbarians.   -  Societies or governments,
vested  with  perfect  legislatures,  were formed under charters
from the  crown, and  an harmonious  intercourse was established
between the  colonies and  the kingdom  from which  they derived
their origin.   The mutual  benefits of  this union  became in a
short time so extraordinary, as  to excite astonishment.  It  is
universally confessed, that the amazing increase of the  wealth,
strength, and navigation of  the realm, arose from  this source;
and the minister,  who so wisely  and successfully directed  the
measures of Great  Britain in the  late war, publicly  declared,
that these colonies enabled her  to triumph over her enemies.  -
Towards the conclusion of that war, it pleased our sovereign  to
make a  change in  his counsels.   -From that  fatal moment, the
affairs of the British empire began to fall into confusion,  and
gradually sliding  from the  summit of  glorious prosperity,  to
which they had been advanced by the virtues and abilities of one
man, are at length distracted by the convulsions, that now shake
it to its  deepest foundations. -  The new ministry  finding the
brave foes  of Britain,  though frequently  defeated, yet  still
contending,  took  up  the  unfortunate  idea of granting them a
hasty peace, and of them subduing her faithful friends.

These devoted colonies were judged to be in such a state, as  to
present victories without bloodshed, and all the easy emoluments
of statuteable plunder. -The uninterrupted tenor of their peace-
able and respectful behaviour  from the beginning of  colonizat-
ion, their dutiful, zealous, and useful services during the war,
though so recently and amply acknowledged in the most honourable
manner by  his majesty,  by the  late king,  and by  parliament,
could not save them from the meditated innovations.  -Parliament
was influenced to adopt  the pernicious project, and  assuming a
new power over them, have  in the course of eleven  years, given
such decisive specimens of the spirit and consequences attending
this power, as to leave  no doubt concerning the effects  of ac-
quiescence under it. They have undertaken to give and grant  our
money without our consent, though we have ever exercised an  ex-
clusive right to dispose of our own property; statutes have been
passed for extending the jurisdiction of courts of admiralty and
vice-admiralty beyond their ancient limits; for depriving us  of
the accustomed and  inestimable privilege of  trial by jury,  in
cases affecting both life and property; for suspending the  leg-
islature of one of  the colonies; for interdicting  all commerce
to the capital  of another; and  for altering fundamentally  the
form of government established  by charter, and secured  by acts
of  its  own  legislature  solemnly  confirmed by the crown; for
exempting the "murderers" of colonists from legal trial, and  in
effect, from punishment; for erecting in a neighboring province,
acquired by the joint arms of Great Britain and America, a  des-
potism dangerous to our very existence; and for quartering  sol-
diers upon the colonists in time of profound peace.  It has also
been resolved in parliament, that colonists charged with commit-
ting certain  offences, shall  be transported  to England  to be
tried.

But why  should we  enumerate our  injuries in  detail?   By one
statute it is declared, that parliament can "of right make  laws
to  bind  us  in  all  cases  whatsoever."  What is to defend us
against so enormous, so unlimited  a power? Not a single  man of
those who  assume it,  is chosen  by us;  or is  subject to  our
controul or  influence; but,  on the  contrary, they  are all of
them exempt  from the  operation of  such laws,  and an American
revenue, if not diverted from the ostensible purposes for  which
it is raised, would actually  lighten their own burdens in  pro-
portion, as they increase ours.  We saw the misery to which such
despotism would  reduce us.   We for  ten years  incessantly and
ineffectually besieged the  throne as supplicants;  we reasoned,
we remonstrated  with parliament,  in the  most mild  and decent
language.

Administration sensible that  we should regard  these oppressive
measures as freemen ought to do, sent over fleets and armies  to
enforce them.  The indignation  of the Americans was roused,  it
is true; but  it was the  indignation of a  virtuous, loyal, and
affectionate people.   A Congress of  delegates from the  United
Colonies was assembled at Philadelphia, on the fifth day of last
September.  We  resolved  again  to  offer an humble and dutiful
petition to the King, and also addressed our fellow subjects  of
Great Britain. We have pursued every temperate, every respectful
measure:   we have  even proceeded  to break  off our commercial
intercourse  with  our  fellow  subjects,  as the last peaceable
admonition, that our attachment  to no nation upon  earth should
supplant  our  attachment  to  liberty.   -This,  we   flattered
ourselves,  was  the  ultimate  step  of  the  controversy:  but
subsequent events have shewn, how vain was this hope of  finding
moderation in our enemies.

Several  threatening  expressions  against  the  colonies   were
inserted in  his majesty's  speech; our  petition, tho'  we were
told it was a decent one, and that his majesty had been  pleased
to receive it  graciously, and to  promise laying it  before his
parliament,  was  huddled  into  both  houses  among a bundle of
American papers, and then neglected.   The lords and commons  in
their address, in the month of February, said, that "a rebellion
at that time actually  existed within the province  of Massachu-
setts Bay; and that those concerned in it, had been countenanced
and encouraged by unlawful combinations and engagements, entered
into by his majesty's subjects in several of the other colonies;
and therefore they besought his majesty, that he would take  the
most effectual measures to inforce due obedience to the laws and
authority of the supreme legislature." -Soon after, the  commer-
cial intercourse of whole colonies, with foreign countries,  and
with each other, was cut off by an act of parliament; by another
several of them were  intirely prohibited from the  fisheries in
the seas near their co[a]sts, on which they always depended  for
their sustenance; and large  reinforcements of ships and  troops
were immediately sent over to general Gage.

Fruitless were all the  entreaties, arguments, and eloquence  of
an  illustrious  band  of  the  most  distinguished  peers,  and
commoners, who nobly and  stren[u]ously asserted the justice  of
our cause, to stay, or  even to mitigate the heedless  fury with
which these accumulated and unexampled outrages were hurried on.
-Equally fruitless was the  interference of the city  of London,
of  Bristol,  and  many  other  respectable towns in our favour.
Parliament adopted an  insidious manoeuvre calculated  to divide
us, to establish a  perpetual auction of taxations  where colony
should bid against  colony, all of  them uninformed what  ransom
would redeem  their lives;  and thus  to extort  from us, at the
point of the bayonet, the unknown sums that should be sufficient
to gratify, if possible  to gratify, ministerial rapacity,  with
the miserable indulgence left to us of raising, in our own mode,
the prescribed tribute.   What terms more rigid  and humiliating
could have  been dictated  by remorseless  victors to  conquered
enemies?  in  our  circumstances  to  accept  them,  would be to
deserve them.

Soon after the intelligence of these proceedings arrived on this
continent, general Gage, who in the course of the last year  had
taken possession of the town of Boston, in the province of Mass-
achusetts Bay, and still occupied it is [as] a garrison, on  the
19th day of April, sent  out from that place a  large detachment
of his army, who made  an unprovoked assault on the  inhabitants
of the said  province, at the  town of Lexington,  as appears by
the affidavits of a great  number of persons, some of  whom were
officers and soldiers of that detachment, murdered eight of  the
inhabitants, and  wounded many  others. From  thence the  troops
proceeded in warlike  array to the  town of Concord,  where they
set upon another party of the inhabitants of the same  province,
killing several and wounding more, until compelled to retreat by
the country people  suddenly assembled to  repel this cruel  ag-
gression.  Hostilities,  thus  commenced  by the British troops,
have since been  prosecuted by them  without regard to  faith or
reputation.   -The inhabitants  of Boston  being confined within
that town by the general their governor, and having, in order to
procure their dismission, entered into a treaty with him, it was
stipulated that the said inhabitants having deposited their arms
with their own magistrates, should have liberty to depart,  tak-
ing with them their  other effects.  They  accordingly delivered
up their arms, but in  open violation of honour, in  defiance of
the obligation of treaties,  which even savage nations  esteemed
sacred, the  governor ordered  the arms  deposited as aforesaid,
that they might be preserved for their owners, to be seized by a
body of soldiers; detained the greatest part of the  inhabitants
in the town, and compelled the few who were permitted to retire,
to leave their most valuable effects behind.

By this perfidy wives are separated from their husbands,  child-
ren from their parents, the  aged and sick from their  relations
and friends, who wish to attend and comfort them; and those  who
have been used to live in plenty and even elegance, are  reduced
to deplorable distress.

The general,  further emulating  his ministerial  masters, by  a
proclamation bearing date on the 12th day of June, after venting
the grossest falsehoods and calumnies against the good people of
these colonies, proceeds to "declare them all, either by name or
description, to be rebels  or traitors, to supercede  the course
of the common law, and instead thereof to publish and order  the
use and exercise of the law martial." -His troops have butchered
our countrymen, have wantonly  burnt Charleston, besides a  con-
siderable number of houses in  other places; our ships and  ves-
sels are seized; the necessary supplies of provisions are inter-
cepted, and he is exerting  his utmost power to spread  destruc-
tion and devastation around him.

We  have  received  certain  intelligence, that general Carelton
Carleton], the governor of Canada, is instigating the people  of
that province and the Indians to  fall upon us; and we have  but
too much reason to apprehend,  that schemes have been formed  to
excite domestic enemies against us.   In brief, a part of  these
colonies now feel, and all of  them are sure of feeling, as  far
as the vengeance  of administration can  inflict them, the  com-
plicated calamities of fire, sword, and famine. [NOTE: From this
point the declaration follows Jefferson's draft] We are  reduced
to the alternative of chusing an unconditional submission to the
tyranny of  irritated ministers,  or resistance  by force.  -The
later is our choice. - We have counted the cost of the  contest,
and find nothing so dreadful as voluntary slavery. -Honour, jus-
tice, and humanity, forbid  us tamely to surrender  that freedom
which  we  received  from  our  gallant ancestors, and which our
innocent posterity have a right  to receive from us.   We cannot
endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding  generations
to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them, if we  basely
entail hereditary bondage upon them.

Our cause is just. Our union is perfect. Our internal  resources
are great, and, if necessary, foreign assistance is  undoubtedly
attainable. -We gratefully  acknowledge, as signal  instances of
the Divine favour towards us, that his Providence would not per-
mit us to be called into this severe controversy, until we  were
grown up to our present strength, had been previously  exercised
in warlike operation,  and possessed of  the means of  defending
ourselves.  With hearts  fortified with these animating  reflec-
tions,  we  most  solemnly,  before  God and the world, declare,
that,  exerting  the  utmost  energy  of those powers, which our
beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we
have been compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in  defi-
ance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and  perseverance,
employ for  the preservation  of our  liberties; being  with one
mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live like slaves.

Lest this declaration should  disquiet the minds of  our friends
and fellow subjects  in any part  of the empire,  we assure them
that we mean not to dissolve that union which has so long and so
happily subsisted between us, and which we sincerely wish to see
restored. -Necessity has not  yet driven us into  that desperate
measure, or induced us to excite any other nation to war against
them. -We have not raised armies with ambitious designs of  sep-
arating from Great Britain, and establishing independent states.
We fight not for glory or  for conquest.  We exhibit to  mankind
the  remarkable  spectacle  of  a  people attacked by unprovoked
enemies, without  any imputation  or even  suspicion of offence.
They boast of their privileges and civilization, and yet proffer
no milder conditions than servitude or death.

In our native land, in defence of the freedom that is our birth-
right, and which we ever  enjoyed till the late violation  of it
-for the protection of our property, acquired solely by the hon-
est industry of our fore-fathers and ourselves, against violence
actually offered, we have taken up arms. We shall lay them  down
when hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors,  and
all danger of their being renewed shall be removed, and not  be-
fore.

With  a  humble  confidence  in  the  mercies of the supreme and
impartial  Judge  and  Ruler  of  the Universe, we most devoutly
implore his divine goodness  to protect us happily  through this
great conflict, to dispose our adversaries to reconciliation  on
reasonable terms,  and thereby  to relieve  the empire  from the
calamities of civil war.

Journal of Congress (ed. 1800), I., pp. 134-139

Authors:
John  Dickerson
Thomas Jefferson