Happy Independence Day

In Congress, July 4, 1776

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.

Georgia

Button Gwinnett

Lyman Hall

George Walton

North Carolina

William Hooper

Joseph Hewes

John Penn

South Carolina

Edward Rutledge

Thomas Heyward, Jr.

Thomas Lynch, Jr.

Arthur Middleton

Massachusetts

John Hancock

Maryland

Samuel Chase

William Paca

Thomas Stone

Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia

George Wythe

Richard Henry Lee

Thomas Jefferson

Benjamin Harrison

Thomas Nelson, Jr.

Francis Lightfoot Lee

Carter Braxton

Pennsylvania

Robert Morris

Benjamin Rush

Benjamin Franklin

John Morton

George Clymer

James Smith

George Taylor

James Wilson

George Ross

Delaware

Caesar Rodney

George Read

Thomas McKean

New York

William Floyd

Philip Livingston

Francis Lewis

Lewis Morris

New Jersey

Richard Stockton

John Witherspoon

Francis Hopkinson

John Hart

Abraham Clark

New Hampshire

Josiah Bartlett

William Whipple

Massachusetts

Samuel Adams

John Adams

Robert Treat Paine

Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island

Stephen Hopkins

William Ellery

Connecticut

Roger Sherman

Samuel Huntington

William Williams

Oliver Wolcott

New Hampshire

Matthew Thornton

Tenth Amendment Center: The Virginia Declaration of Rights

Setting a Foundation: The Virginia Declaration of Rights from the Tenth Amendment Center discusses how the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which was passed around the time that the Declaration of Independence was beginning to be written, was a basis for both the Declaration and the much later Constitution.

On June 12, 1776, the Virginia House of Burgesses passed the Virginia Declaration of Rights. It is arguably the most important founding document that most people have never heard of.
The Virginia Declaration of Rights laid the groundwork for both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. Most significantly, the first three sections establish the philosophical framework that supports the entire U.S. system of government.
It declares that “all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights,” that “all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people,” and that “the community has an indubitable, inalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter, or abolish [government], in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal.”
These ideas were later reflected in the Declaration of Independence.
History
Months before the 13 colonies approved the Declaration of Independence, Virginia was already operating as a free and independent state. The colonial governor fled in January 1776 after the burning of Norfolk. In his absence, the Governor’s Council (the upper house of the colonial legislature) and the House of Burgesses dissolved themselves into a Convention under the authority “of the people” and assumed control over colonial affairs.
On May 15, 1776, the Convention declared Virginia a free and independent state “absolved from all allegiance to, or dependence upon, the Crown or Parliament of Great Britain. The resolutions included three action steps — drafting a declaration of rights, drafting a constitution, along with establishing confederated relationships with the other colonies and treaty relationships with other countries.
Historian Kevin Gutzman wrote that the entire process drew from precedents set during Britain’s Glorious Revolution.

“Self-consciously following the example of Britain’s Glorious Revolution, in which the Declaration of Rights had been the condition of William and Mary’s joint assumption of the English monarchy, the Virginians put their fundamental statement of political principles first, and then adopted the constitution that would implement it. Virginians thought of their colony as independent from that point.”

The Convention formed a committee headed by George Mason to draft the declaration of Rights.
Mason drew from and expanded on existing English political thought. A close reading of the declaration reveals influences including the English Bill of Rights (1689) and the writings of John Locke.
He begins by establishing the philosophical foundations of government, including separation of powers, and then outlines several specific individual rights, including many that were reflected in the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights. The document affirms the right to a jury trial, protection from excessive fines and bail, a ban on general warrants that authorize searches without “facts,” freedom of the press, and the subordination of the militia to civil authority.
James Madison penned the final article, declaring that “religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience.”
The Convention adopted the Virginia Declaration of Rights on June 12, 1776.
Gutzman writes, “The influence of the Virginia Declaration of Rights would be hard to exaggerate.”

“Many of its provisions were used in other states. Thomas Jefferson, helping Frenchmen draft their Revolution’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, saw to it that some of the Virginia provisions were essentially translated into that document. From France, their language made its way into the charters of several francophone countries, and eventually into the United Nations’ version. From there, it would be transplanted into yet more countries’.”

A Revolution of Thought
In fact, the Virginia Declaration of Rights reflected a revolution in thought. It turned the established British conception of government on its head.
When people today talk about the American Revolution, they generally mean the fight with England. But there was a more fundamental revolution that began long before the first shot was fired and ultimately drove the American colonists to seek independence – a revolution of thought that radically altered the conception of sovereignty. The Virginia Declaration of Rights articulated these ideas.
In an 1818 letter to Hezekiah Niles, John Adams described the American Revolution in just such terms.

“But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations. … This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution.”

This fundamental change in thought relates to the concept of sovereignty – the question of who holds the ultimate power and authority within a political society.
In the British system, the “King in Parliament” was considered sovereign. In effect, Parliament was sovereign with the king serving as the arm to put its power into action.
In the years leading up to the Revolution, Americans started to question this conception of political power. They began to think of a constitution as something that exists above the government. The colonists began to reject the idea that government formed the constitution and instead conceived of the constitution as something that binds government. They used these kinds of constitutional arguments when challenging British authority, asserting they had longstanding, well-established constitutional rights that the King and Parliament were violating.
We see this shift in the first several articles of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, particularly Section 2, declaring:

“That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people; that magistrates are their trustees and servants and at all times amenable to them.”

This was reflected in the Declaration of Independence.

“To secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

The Declaration of Rights makes clear the importance of firmly stating our principles and placing limits on government. The question then becomes, how do you enforce them?