Jefferson's Original Draft of the Declaration of
Independence
This text is taken from The Writings
of Thomas Jefferson, Volume I (Washington D.C.: The Thomas Jefferson
Memorial Association, 1903), pages 28-38. A good portion of the text
was deleted or changed by the Congressional delegates. Deletions
are indicated by [brackets]. The last two paragraphs, Jefferson's
original and Congress's version are presented side by side in Jefferson's
text and here.
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] 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 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 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] their
former systems of government. The history of the present
king of Great Britain is
a history of [unremitting] injuries and usurpations, [among which appears
no solitary 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 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 meantime, 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] [Changed by Congress: obstructed] the administration
of justice [totally to cease in some of these states] [Changed by Congress:
by] 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 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 [added
by Congress:
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] [Changed by Congress: 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 [Added by Congress: 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 [Added by Congress: excited domestic insurrection among 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 for 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 [Added by Congress: 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] [Added by Congress: an unwarrantable] 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 parliament was no part of our constitution,
nor ever in idea, if history have may be credited: and,] we [Added by
Congress: have] appealed to and their native justice and magnanimity
[as well as to] [Changed: and we have conjured them by] the ties of our
common kindred to disavow these usurpations which [were likely to] [Changed:
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, reestablished 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 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 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] [Changed: We must therefore]
acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our [eternal] separation [Added:
and hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace
friends]!
Version A: 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.
Version B: 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.
©1996, Richard Hooker Updated
6-6-1999 Source
