Thanks jimjohn.
Interestingly, the Declaration was drawn up on the 2nd of July, and not signed by most of the signers until early August. On the back of the Declaration there's a single handprint.
Brad Meltzer's Decoded: Declaration of Independence
Posted on 07/03/2015 8:59:27 PM PDT by jimjohn
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
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 certain unalienable 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 shewn, 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, 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 alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, 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.
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, 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 endeavoured 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 obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made 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, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies 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 constitution, 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 neighbouring 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 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, 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 compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & 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 amongst us, and has endeavoured 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.
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 injury. 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.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our 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, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by 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.
Paul Harvey : Our Lives Our Fortunes Our Sacred Honor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX-APfe3i8Q
Thanks for that.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, ...
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 obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone,...
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, ...
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies 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 constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
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, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, ...
Wow... some of these sound familiar.
Heartbreaking. 239 years later, the country is being dismantled and destroyed by its own now completely corrupt government. Grieves my soul.
I'm deeply honored to be descended from one of those men. I knew, from family stories, that he had lost everything as a result of his involvement in the Revolution. But I did not know that his misfortune was all too common among those men.
I am beyond humbled tonight, and pray that my Beloved Nation may yet shake off the horrific yoke it now bears as a result of decades of increasingly poor government.
It breaks my heart to think that the hardships the Founders underwent would be for naught -- that we would not, as Dr. Franklin feared, be able to keep our Republic.
God Bless America, and please God, help America regain her footing and rise again.
We will still win. You can’t blackmail a slave. They will fly too close to the sun. Our world is more solid.
230 years was a pretty good run.
It appears we have come full circle, the last elections have meant nothing substantial, instead of a STOP sign, they've become rubber stamps, sigh.
last stance from the Longfellow's Paul Revere's Ride:
So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,-—
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo for evermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.
Poor old Uncle Sam. He will be missed! ;)
An Appeal to Heaven, and a covenant with God for the gifts of freedom and liberty.
Now that our present wicked government has repudiated God and adopted Satan’s colors, God will withhold His hand of protection over America.
If only our current “leadership” accepted it as the law of the land.
We need to for the conversion of all to Christ.
Interesting trivia. And 239 years later, after 2 world wars, a revolution, and a civil war...we have roughly the same amount of freedom as a British subject does. And arguably a more corrupt government.
On this day in 1776, the Virginia Convention assembled in Williamsburg declared the Transylvania Colony (Kentucky) purchase by the Richard Henderson & co null and void. In doing so, Virginia asserted control over it’s western lands and declared British law over the colonies invalid.
the action was a first act of independence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Grant_Deed
Look at what the Founders endured, and the risks they took to make and keep us free.
Today we thank our veterans and active military for fighting to keep us free.
Tomorrow the fight will be ours to wage. Do any of us — that means YOU — have the balls to yell ENOUGH! and mean it? Or will you crouch down and lick the hand of those who take away your Confederate flags and release criminal illegals onto our streets and redefine marriage without our vote of consent?
At what point do you declare an end to Political Correctness and stand up for YOUR Correctness, for your own belief in right and wrong?
Thanks jimjohn.
Interestingly, the Declaration was drawn up on the 2nd of July, and not signed by most of the signers until early August. On the back of the Declaration there's a single handprint.
Brad Meltzer's Decoded: Declaration of Independence
The ultimate Opus.
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