Declaration of Independence

Question 1

I

Answer 1

Introduction

Question 2

I.1

Answer 2

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.

Question 3

II

Answer 3

The Foundations of Free Government

Question 4

II.1

Answer 4

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.

Question 5

II.2

Answer 5

That, to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Question 6

II.3

Answer 6

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.

Question 7

II.4

Answer 7

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.

Question 8

II.5

Answer 8

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.

Question 9

II.6

Answer 9

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.

Question 10

III

Answer 10

Abuses of King George III

Question 11

III.1

Answer 11

1. 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.

Question 12

III.2

Answer 12

2. He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

Question 13

III.3

Answer 13

3. 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.

Question 14

III.4

Answer 14

4. 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.

Question 15

III.5

Answer 15

5. 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.

Question 16

III.6

Answer 16

6. He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

Question 17

III.7

Answer 17

7. 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.

Question 18

III.8

Answer 18

8. 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.

Question 19

III.9

Answer 19

9. He has obstructed the administration of justice by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

Question 20

III.10

Answer 20

10. He has made judges dependent on his will alone for the tenure of their offices and the amount and payment of their salaries.

Question 21

III.11

Answer 21

11. He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

Question 22

III.12

Answer 22

12. He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislatures.

Question 23

III.13

Answer 23

13. He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to the civil power.

Question 24

III.14

Answer 24

14. 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 offenses;
    – 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 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.

Question 25

III.15

Answer 25

15. He has abdicated government here by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

Question 26

III.16

Answer 26

16. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

Question 27

III.17

Answer 27

17. 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 scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

Question 28

III.18

Answer 28

18. 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.

Question 29

III.19

Answer 29

19. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst 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.

Question 30

IV

Answer 30

Efforts to Obtain Justice from Great Britain

Question 31

IV.1

Answer 31

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.

Question 32

IV.2

Answer 32

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 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.

Question 33

V

Answer 33

Birth of the American Nation

Question 34

V.1

Answer 34

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.

Question 35

V.2

Answer 35

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.

Question 36

VI

Answer 36

Signers of the Declaration of Independence

Question 37

VIa

Answer 37

New Hampshire

Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Matthew Thornton

Question 38

VIb

Answer 38

Massachussetts

John Hancock
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry

Question 39

VIc

Answer 39

Rhode Island

Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery

Question 40

VId

Answer 40

Connecticut

Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott

Question 41

VIe

Answer 41

New York

William Floyd
Phillip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris

Question 42

VIf

Answer 42

New Jersey

Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark

Question 43

VIg

Answer 43

Pennsylvania

Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross

Question 44

VIh

Answer 44

Delaware

Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean

Question 45

VIi

Answer 45

Maryland

Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Question 46

VIj

Answer 46

Virginia

George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Frances Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton

Question 47

VIk

Answer 47

North Carolina

William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn

Question 48

VIl

Answer 48

South Carolina

Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton

Question 49

VIm

Answer 49

Georgia

Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton