OUR AMERICA
By: C.J. Peterson
On July 4, 1776, our
forefathers signed the Declaration of Independence. I have to wonder today,
with the events that have been unfolding just days after we celebrated this
anniversary, what they would think of our actions. I’m sure their hearts would
break just as much as mine is right now. In light of those events, I’m going to
just post the Declaration, in hopes that people will read it in its entirety.
My prayer is that the words and intentions will catch, and people will think
twice before they continue with the violence, tearing our country apart.
2 Chronicles 7:14: if my people, who are called by my name,
will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked
ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal
their land.
Declaration
of Independence:
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.
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 of 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 harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the
Consent of our legislatures.
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 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 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.
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.
