Thomas Jefferson’s “Original Rough Draft”
of the Declaration of Independence
A Declaration of the Representatives of the
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in General Congress assembled.
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a
people to advance from that subordination in which they have
hitherto remained, & to assume among the powers of the earth
the equal & independant station to which the laws of nature &
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 change.
We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men
are created equal & independant, that from that equal creation
they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the
preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness; that
to secure these ends, governments are instituted among men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed;
that whenever any form of government shall become destructive
of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to
abolish it, & to institute new government, laying it’s foundation
on such principles & organising it’s powers in such form, as to
them shall seem most likely to effect their safety & happiness.
prudence indeed will dictate that governments long established
should not be changed for light & 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 & usurpations, begun at a
distinguished period, & pursuing invariably the same object,
evinces a design to subject them to arbitrary power, it is their
right, it is their duty, to throw off such government & to provide
new guards for their future security. such has been the patient
sufferance of these colonies; & such is now the necessity
which constrains them to expunge their former systems of government.
the history of his present majesty, is a history of unremitting
injuries and usurpations, among which no one fact
stands single or solitary to contradict the uniform tenor of the
rest, all of which 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 &
pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his
assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has neglected
utterly to attend to them.
he has refused to pass other laws for the accomodation of
large districts of people unless those people would relinquish
the right of representation, a right inestimable to them, & formidable
to tyrants alone:
he has dissolved Representative houses repeatedly & continually,
for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the
rights of the people:
he has refused for a long space of time 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, & 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; & raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands:
he has suffered the administration of justice totally to cease
in some of these colonies, 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 amount of their salaries:
he has erected a multitude of new offices by a self-assumed
power, & sent hither swarms of officers to harrass our people &
eat out their substance:
he has kept among us in times of peace standing armies &
ships of war:
he has affected to render the military, independant of & superior
to the civil power:
he has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction
foreign to our constitutions and unacknoleged by our laws; giving
his assent to their pretended acts of legislation, for quartering
large bodies of armed troops among us;
for protecting them by a mock-trial from punishment for
any murders 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 benefits of trial by jury;
for transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences:
for taking away our charters, & altering fundamentally the
forms of our governments;
for suspending our own legislatures & declaring themselves
invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever:
he has abdicated government here, withdrawing his governors,
& declaring us out of his allegiance & protection:
he has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our
towns & destroyed the lives of our people:
he is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries
to compleat the works of death, desolation & tyranny, already
begun with circumstances of cruelty & perfidy unworthy
the head of a civilized nation:
he 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, & conditions
of existence:
he has incited treasonable insurrections in our fellow-subjects,
with the allurements of forfeiture & confiscation of our
property:
he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating
it’s most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant
people who never offended him, captivating & 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 & 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 upon 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 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 people who mean to be free. future ages will
scarce believe that the hardiness of one man, adventured within
the short compass of 12 years only, on so many acts of tyranny
without a mask, over a people fostered & fixed in principles of
liberty.
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 jurisdiction over these our states.
we have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration
& settlement here, no one of which could warrant so strange a
pretension: that these were effected at the expence of our own
blood & 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 & 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 appealed to
their native justice & magnanimity, as well as to the ties of our
common kindred to disavow these usurpations which were
likely to interrupt our correspondence & connection. they too
have been deaf to the voice of justice & of consanguinity, &
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 & foreign mercenaries to invade & deluge us
in blood. 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 to hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies
in war, in peace friends. we might have been a free & a
great people together; but a communication of grandeur & of
freedom it seems is below their dignity. be it so, since they will
have it: the road to glory & happiness is open to us too; we will
climb it in a separate state, and acquiesce in the necessity which
pronounces our everlasting Adieu!
We therefore the representatives of the United States of
America in General Congress assembled do, in the name & by
authority of the good people of these states, reject and re-
nounce all allegiance & subjection to the kings of Great Britain
& all others who may hereafter claim by, through, or under
them; we utterly dissolve & break off all political connection
which may have heretofore subsisted between us & the people
or parliament of Great Britain; and finally we do assert and declare
these colonies to be free and independant states, and that
as free & independant states they shall hereafter have power to
levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce,
& to do all other acts and things which independant
states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration
we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, & our
sacred honour
Source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, gen. eds. Julian P. Boyd et al., 31 vols. to
date (Princeton, 1950– ), I, 423–427.
