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THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 2 The autobiography of Thomas Jefferson: The Declaration of independence It appearing in the course of these debates, that t he colonies of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryl and, and South Carolina were not yet matured for falling from the parent stem, but that they were fast advancing to that state, it was thought most prudent to wait for a while for them, and to postpone the f inal decision to July 1st; but, that this might occasion as little delay as possible, a committee was appointed to prepare a Declaration of Independe nce. The com- mittee were John Adams, Dr. Franklin, Roger Sherman , Robert R.
Livingston, and myself. Committees were also appoin ted, at the same time, to prepare a plan of confederation for the co lonies, and to state the terms proper to be proposed for foreign allianc e. The committee for drawing the Declaration of Independence, desire d me to do it. It was accordingly done, and being approved by them, I reported it to the House on Friday, the 28th of June, when it was read , and ordered to lie on the table. On Monday, the 1st of July, the H ouse resolved itself into a committee of the whole, and resumed the cons ideration of the original motion made by the delegates of Virginia, which, being again debated through the day, was carried in the affirma tive by the votes of New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Is land, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and Geor gia. South Caro- lina and Pennsylvania voted against it. Delaware ha d but two members present, and they were divided. The delegates from New York de- clared they were for it themselves, and were assure d their constituents were for it; but that their instructions having bee n drawn near a twelve-month before, when reconciliation was still the general object, they were enjoined by them to do nothing which shou ld impede that object. They, therefore, thought themselves not jus tifiable in voting on either side, and asked leave to withdraw from the q uestion: which was given them. The committee rose and reported their r esolution to the House. Mr. Edward Rutledge, of South Carolina, then requested the determination might be put off to the next day, as he believed his col- leagues, though they disapproved of the resolution, would then join in it for the sake of unanimity. The ultimate question , whether the House would agree to the resolution of the committee, was accordingly post- poned to the next day, when it was again moved, and South Carolina concurred in voting for it. In the meantime, a thir d member had come post from the Delaware counties, and turned the vot e of that colony in favor of the resolution. Members of a different sen timent attending that morning from Pennsylvania also, her vote was c hanged, so that the whole twelve colonies who were authorized to vo te at all, gave their voices for it; and, within a few days, the co nvention of New York approved of it, and thus supplied the void occasion ed by the withdraw- ing of her delegates from the vote. Congress proceeded the same day to consider the Dec laration of Independence, which had been reported and lain on t he table the Fri- day preceding, and on Monday referred to a committe e of the whole.
The pusillanimous idea that we had friends in Engla nd worth keeping terms with, still haunted the minds of many. For th is reason, those passages which conveyed censures on the people of E ngland were struck out, lest they should give them offense. The clause too, repro- bating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in com- plaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had ne ver attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still wished to continue it. Our northern brethren also, I believe, felt a little tender under those censures; for though their peopl e had very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty conside rable carriers of them to others. The debates, having taken up the gr eater parts of the 2d, 3d, and 4th days of July, were, on the evening of the last, closed; the Declaration was reported by the committee, agre ed to by the House, and signed by every member present, except M r. Dickinson. As the sentiments of men are known not only by what th ey receive, but what they reject also, I will state the form of the Declaration as origi- nally reported. The parts struck out by Congress sh all be distinguished by a black line drawn under them, and those inserte d by them shall be placed in the margin, or in a concurrent column. 3 THOMAS JEFFERSON THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 4 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 assu me among the powers of the earth, the separate and equ al station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of m an- kind requires that they should declare the causes w hich impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all m en are created equal; that they are endowed by their C rea- tor with inherent and inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happines s. 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 be- comes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principle s and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happine ss.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments lon g established should not be changed for light and tra nsient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are suf- ferable, 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 pe riod and pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is thei r right, it is their duty to throw off such governmen t, and to provide new guards for their future security. Su ch has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to expunge their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of unrem itting injuries and usurpations, among which appears no so li- tary fact to contradict the uniform tenor of the rest, but all 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 whole- some and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of im- mediate and pressing importance, unless suspended i n their operation till his assent should be obtained; and, when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to atte nd to them.
He has refused to pass other laws for the accommo- dation of large districts of people, unless those p eople would relinquish the right of representation in the legis- lature, a right inestimable to them, and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the deposi tory of their public records, for the sole purpose of fa tiguing 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 dissolu- tions to cause others to be elected, whereby the le gisla- tive powers, incapable of annihilation, have return ed to the people at large for their exercise, the state r emain- ing, in the meantime, exposed to all the dangers of inva- sion 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 othe rs to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the con- ditions of new appropriations of lands. certain alter repeated all having 5 THOMAS JEFFERSON THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 6 He has suffered the administration of justice totally to cease in some of these states refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers. He has made our judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and pay- ment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of new offices, by a sel f- assumed power and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance. He has kept among us in times of peace standing ar- mies and ships of war without the consent of our legisla- tures.
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 juri s- diction foreign to our constitutions and unacknowle dged by our laws, giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation for quartering large bodies of armed tr oops 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 [ ] of the bene- fits of trial by jury; for transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences; for abolishing the fr ee system of English laws in a neighboring province, estab- lishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarg ing its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute ru le into these states; for taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments; for suspending our own le g- islatures, and declaring themselves invested with p ower to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated government here, withdrawing his governors, and declaring us out of his allegiance a nd protection.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burn t our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is, at this time, transporting large armies of f or- eign mercenaries to complete the works of death, de so- lation and tyranny, already begun, with circumstanc es of cruelty and perfidy [ ] unworthy the head of a ci vilized nation. He has constrained our fellow citizens, taken capti ve on the high seas, to bear arms against their countr y, to become the executioners of their friends and brethr en, or to fall themselves by their hands. He has [ ] endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction o f all ages, sexes and conditions of existence .
He has incited treasonable insurrections of our fel - low citizens, with the allurements of forfeiture and con- fiscation 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 trans- portation 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 prosti- tuted his negative for suppressing every legislativ e at- tempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable com - merce. 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 purcha se that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murder- ing the people on whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the LIBER- TIES of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the LIVES of another.
obstructed by in m any cases colonies ; by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us. scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally excited domestic in- surrections amongst us, and has 7 THOMAS JEFFERSON THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 8 In every stage of these oppressions we have peti- tioned for redress in the most humble terms: our re - peated petitions have been answered only by repeate d injuries.
A prince whose character is thus marked by every ac t which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a [ ] people who mean to be free. Future ages will scarcely believe that the hardiness of one man adve n- tured, within a short compass of twelve years only, to lay a foundation so broad and so undisguised for tyrann y over a people fostered and fixed in principles of free- dom .
Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our Brit- ish 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 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 p ar- liament was no part of our constitution, nor ever in idea, if history may be credited: and, we [ ] appealed to their native justice and magnanimity as well as to the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations which were likely to interrupt our connections and cor- respondence. They too have been deaf to the voice o f justice and of consanguinity, and when occasions ha ve been given them, by the regular course of their laws, of removing from their councils the disturbers of our har- mony, they have, by their free election, reestablis hed them in power. At this very time too, they are perm it- ting their chief magistrate to send over not only soldiers of our common blood, but Scotch and foreign merce- naries to invade and destroy us. These facts have g iven the last stab to agonizing affection, and manly spirit bids us to renounce forever these unfeeling brethren. We must endeavor to forget our former love for them, and hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies i n 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 acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our separation [ ]!
free an unwa rrantable us have and we have conjured them by would inev itably We must ther efore and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enem ies in war, in peace friends.
We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America in General Con- gress assembled, appealing to the supreme judges of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do in the name, and by the au- thority 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 Brit- ish Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Brit- ain, 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 inde- pendent 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.
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 alle- giance 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 declara- tion, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. The Declaration thus signed on the 4th, on paper, w as engrossed on parchment, and signed again on the 2d of August.