and independent states,] and ought to be, totally dissolved;

that as free and independen❘ 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, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

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.

The Declaration thus signed on the 4th, on paper, was engrossed on parchment, and signed again on the 2d of August.

[Some erroneous statements of the proceedings on the Declaration of Independence having got before the public in latter times, Mr. Samuel A. Wells asked explanations of me, which are given in my letter to him of May 12, '19, before and now again referred to.* I took notes in my place while these things were going on, and at their close wrote them out in form and with correctness, and from 1 to 7 of the two preceding sheets, are the originals then written; as the two following are of the earlier debates on the Confederation, which I took in like manner.t]

On Friday, July 12, the committee appointed to draw the articles of Confederation reported them, and, on the 22d, the House resolved themselves into a committee to take them into consideration. On the 30th and 31st of that month, and 1st of the ensuing, those articles were debated which determined the propor

[* See Appendix, note B.]

[ The above note of the author is on a slip of paper, pasted in at the end of the Declaration. Here is also sewed into the MS. a slip of newspaper containing, under the head "Declaration of Independence," a letter from Thomas M'Kean, to Messrs. William M'Corkle & Son, dated “ Philadelphia, June 16, 1817.” This letter is to be found in the Port Folio, Sept. 1817, p. 249.]

* m2 Adams, hand conting

A Declaration by the Representatives of the UMTED STATES

them to

inder

axes, it is their right, it is their

to unlock ang provints,
duty, to throw off such
government & to provide new quards for their future security such has

been the patient sufferance of these colonies, & such is now

alter

the necessity
thing of Great Britain
which constrains them to [expunge] their former systems of government

the

the history of present party,

appears

is a

no

repeated

history of [unremilling / injuries and

solitary fact

butfall

having

usurpations, [among which, act of at took y

to contra.

-dict the uniform tenor of the rest [ att 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 fulschood]

he has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the pub_

he has kept among us in times of peace, tanding armies & ships of war]
he has affected to render the military, independent of & superior to the cuil power:
he has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign
-tions and unacknoleged by our laws, giving his assent to their pretended t
of legislation, for quartering large bodies of armed troops among us;

for protecting them

which

Гу

to our constitu-
acts of

a mock trial from punishment for any

murders

they should commet on

the inhabitants of these states; for cutting offour trade with all parts of the world;

for imposing taxes on us

without our consent;

in many cases

for depriving us of the benefits of trial by jury;

beyond

seas to be tried

for transporting
for abolishing the free system of English laws

and

in a

pretended offences.

nt for introducing

Jame

absolute

ny enlarging it; boundaries so as to render it at once an into trise dmnes [States!