In Congress, July 4, 1776, the unanimous declaration of the 13 United States of America.

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the

political bonds 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, but they are

endowed by the Creator with certain, unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty,

and a pursuit of happiness.

That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just

powers from the consent of the government, that whenever any form of government becomes

destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to 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 affect 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 has shown that mankind are

more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to write themselves by abolishing the

forms to which they are accustomed, but when a long train of abuses and use of patience

pursuing invariably the same object invents as 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

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