American Tempest Read Online Free PDF

and enlarging 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 Government.
    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 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.
    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 attention 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 connection 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 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.
    Signers of the Declaration of Independence
    Connecticut
    Samuel Huntington
    Roger Sherman
    William Williams
    Oliver Wolcott
    Delaware
    Thomas McKean
    George Read
    Caesar Rodney
    Georgia
    Button Gwinnett
    Lyman Hall
    George Walton
    Maryland
    Charles Carroll
    Samuel Chase
    William Paca
    Thomas Stone
    Massachusetts
    John Adams
    Samuel Adams
    Elbridge Gerry
    John Hancock
    Robert Treat Payne
    New Hampshire
    Josiah Bartlett
    Matthew Thornton
    William Whipple
    New Jersey
    Abraham Clark
    John Hart
    Francis Hopkinson
    Richard Stockton
    John Witherspoon
    New York
    William Floyd
    Francis Lewis
    Philip Livingston
    Lewis Morris
    North Carolina
    Joseph Hewes
    William Hooper
    John Penn
    Pennsylvania
    George Clymer
    Benjamin Franklin
    Robert