[Illustration: Draft of Declaration of Independence, page018]
[Illustration: Draft of Declaration of Independence, page019]
[Illustration: Draft of Declaration of Independence, page020]
[Illustration: Draft of Declaration of Independence, page021]
* In this publication, the parts struck out are printed in
Italics and inclosed in brackets--and those inserted are
inclosed in parenthesis.
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 [_inherent and_] (certain)
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 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 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 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 [_expunge_]
(alter) their former systems of government. The history of the present
king of Great Britain is a history of [_unremitting_] (repeated)
injuries and usurpations, [_among which appears no solitary act 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 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 [_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
invasion 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 [_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, and the amount and payment 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 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 its 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, and 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 and protection._] (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
complete 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 amoungst 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 its 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
[_a_] (an unwarrantable) jurisdiction over [_these our states_] (us). 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 expense 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 [_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 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 soldiers 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 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, do in the name, and by the authority of
the good people of these 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 independent states, 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, we mutually pledge to each
other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor._]
(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 the
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 declaration thus signed on the 4th, on paper, was engrossed on
parchment, and signed again on the 2nd 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. (See Appendix, note B.)
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.]
* The above note of the author is on a slip of paper, pasted
in at the end of the Declaration. Here is also sewed into
the MS. a slip of newspaper containing, under the head
‘Declaration of Independence,’ a letter from Thomas Mc’Kean
to Messrs. William M’Corkle & Son, dated ‘Philadelphia,
June 16 1817.’ This letter is to be found in the Port Folio,
Sept. 1817, p. 249.
[Illustration: Facsimile of Declaration in Jefferson’s Handwriting--p1]
[Illustration: Facsimile of Declaration in Jefferson’s Handwriting--p2]
[Illustration: Facsimile of Declaration in Jefferson’s Handwriting--p3]
[Illustration: Facsimile of Declaration in Jefferson’s Handwriting--p4]
On Friday, July 12, the committee appointed to draw the articles
of Confederation reported them, and on the 22nd, the House resolved
themselves into a committee to take them into consideration. On the
30th and 31st of that month, and 1st of the ensuing, those articles were
debated which determined the proportion, or quota, of money which each
state should furnish to the common treasury, and the manner of voting
in Congress. The first of these articles was expressed in the original
draught in these words. ‘Art. XI. All charges of war and all other
expenses that shall be incurred for the common defence, or general
welfare, and allowed by the United States assembled, shall be defrayed
out of a common treasury, which shall be supplied by the several
colonies in proportion to the number of inhabitants of every age, sex,
and quality, except Indians not paying taxes, in each colony, a true
account-of which, distinguishing the white inhabitants, shall be
triennially taken and transmitted to the Assembly of the United States.’
Mr. Chase moved that the quotas should be fixed, not by the number of
inhabitants of every condition, but by that of the ‘white inhabitants.’
He admitted that taxation should be always in proportion to property;
that this was, in theory, the true rule; but that, from a variety of
difficulties, it was a rule which could never be adopted in practice.
The value of the property in every state, could never be estimated
justly and equally. Some other measures for the wealth of the state must
therefore be devised, some standard referred to, which would be more
simple. He considered the number of inhabitants as a tolerably good
criterion of property, and that this might always be obtained. He
therefore thought it the best mode which we could adopt, with one
exception only: he observed that negroes are property, and as such,
cannot be distinguished from the lands or personalities held in those
states where there are few slaves; that the surplus of profit which a
Northern farmer is able to lay by, he invests in cattle, horses, &c.
whereas a Southern farmer lays out the same surplus in slaves. There is
no more reason therefore for taxing the Southern states on the farmer’s
head, and on his slave’s head, than the Northern ones on their farmers’
heads and the heads of their cattle: that the method proposed would,
therefore, tax the Southern states according to their numbers and their
wealth conjunctly, while the Northern would be taxed on numbers only;
that negroes, in fact, should not be considered as members of the state,
more than cattle, and that they have no more interest in it.
Mr. John Adams observed, that the numbers of people were taken by this
article, as an index of the wealth of the state, and not as subjects of
taxation; that, as to this matter, it was of no consequence by what name
you called your people, whether by that of freemen or of slaves; that
in some countries the laboring poor were called freemen, in others
they were called slaves; but that the difference as to the state
was imaginary only. What matters it whether a landlord employing ten
laborers on his farm, give them annually as much money as will buy them
the necessaries of life, or gives them those necessaries at short hand?
The ten laborers add as much wealth annually to the state, increase its
exports as much, in the one case as the other. Certainly five hundred
freemen produce no more profits, no greater surplus for the payment of
taxes, than five hundred slaves. Therefore the state in which are the
laborers called freemen, should be taxed no more than that in which are
those called slaves. Suppose, by an extraordinary operation of nature
or of law, one half the laborers of a state could in the course of one
night be transformed into slaves; would the state be made the poorer or
the less able to pay taxes? That the condition of the laboring poor
in most countries, that of the fishermen particularly of the Northern
states, is as abject as that of slaves. It is the number of laborers
which produces the surplus for taxation, and numbers, therefore,
indiscriminately, are the fair index of wealth; that it is the use of
the word ‘property’ here, and its application to some of the people
of the state, which produces the fallacy. How does the Southern farmer
procure slaves? Either by importation or by purchase from his neighbor.
If he imports a slave, he adds one to the number of laborers in his
country, and proportionably to its profits and abilities to pay-taxes;
if he buys from his neighbor, it is only a transfer of a laborer from
one farm to another, which does not change the annual produce of the
state, and therefore should not change its tax: that if a Northern
farmer works ten laborers on his farm, he can, it is true, invest the
surplus of ten men’s labor in cattle; but so may the Southern farmer,
working ten slaves; that a state of one hundred thousand freemen can
maintain no more cattle, than one of one hundred thousand slaves.
Therefore, they have no more of that kind of property; that a slave may,
indeed, from the custom of speech, be more properly called the wealth
of his master, than the free laborer might be called the wealth of his
employer: but as to the state, both were equally its wealth, and should
therefore equally add to the quota of its tax.
Mr. Harrison proposed, as a compromise, that two slaves should be
counted as one freeman. He affirmed that slaves did not do as much work
as freemen, and doubted if two effected more than one; that this was
proved by the price of labor; the hire of a laborer in the Southern
colonies being from £8 to £12, while in the Northern it was generally
£24.
Mr. Wilson said, that if this amendment should take place, the Southern
colonies would have all the benefit of slaves, whilst the Northern ones
would bear the burthen: that slaves increase the profits of a state,
which the Southern states mean to take to themselves; that they also
increase the burthen of defence, which would of course fall so much the
heavier on the Northern: that slaves occupy the places of freemen and
eat their food. Dismiss your slaves, and freemen will take their places.
It is our duty to lay every discouragement on the importation of slaves;
but this amendment would give the _jus trium liberorum_ to him who
would import slaves: that other kinds of property were pretty equally
distributed through all the colonies: there were as many cattle, horses,
and sheep, in the North as the South, and South as the North; but not so
as to slaves: that experience has shown that those colonies have, been
always able to pay most, which have the most inhabitants, whether they
be black or white: and the practice of the Southern colonies has always
been to make every farmer pay poll taxes upon all his laborers, whether
they be black or white. He acknowledges indeed, that freemen work the
most; but they consume the most also. They do not produce a greater
surplus for taxation. The slave is neither fed nor clothed so
expensively as a freeman. Again, white women are exempted from labor
generally, but negro women are not. In this then the Southern states
have an advantage as the article now stands. It has sometimes been said
that slavery is necessary, because the commodities they raise would be
too dear for market if cultivated by freemen: but now it is said that
the labor of the slave is the dearest.
Mr. Payne urged the original resolution of Congress, to proportion the
quotas of the states to the number of souls.
Dr. Witherspoon was of opinion, that the value of lands and houses was
the best estimate of the wealth of a nation, and that it was practicable
to obtain such a valuation. This is the true barometer of wealth. The
one now proposed is imperfect in itself, and unequal between the states.
It has been objected that negroes eat the food of freemen, and therefore
should be taxed; horses also eat the food of freemen; therefore they
also should be taxed. It has been said too, that in carrying slaves into
the estimate of the taxes the state is to pay, we do no more than those
states themselves do, who always take slaves into the estimate of the
taxes the individual is to pay. But the cases are not parallel. In
the Southern colonies slaves pervade the whole colony; but they do
not pervade the whole continent. That as to the original resolution
of Congress, to proportion the quotas according to the souls, it was
temporary only, and related to the monies heretofore emitted; whereas
we are now entering into a new compact, and therefore stand on original
ground.
August 1. The question being put, the amendment proposed was rejected
by the votes of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut,
New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, against those of Delaware,
Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina. Georgia was divided.
The other article was in these words. ‘Art. XVII. In determining
questions, each colony shall have one vote.’