APPENDIX. [A, p. 77.] Articles of Confederation and perpetual union entered into by the Delegates of the several colonies of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, &c., in General Congress, met at Philadelphia, May 20th, 1775. I. The name of the confederacy shall henceforth be, The United Colonies of North America. II. The United Colonies hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, binding on themselves and their posterity, for their common defence against their enemies, for the security of their liberties and their properties, the safety of their persons and families, and their mutual and general welfare. III. That each colony shall enjoy and retain as much as it may think fit of its own present laws, customs, rights, privileges, and peculiar jurisdictions, within its own limits; and may amend its own constitution, as shall seem best to its own assembly or convention. IV. That for the more convenient management of general interests, delegates shall be elected annually, in each colony, to meet in general Congress, at such time and place as shall be agreed on in the next preceding Congress. Only where particular circumstances do not make a deviation necessary, it is understood to be a rule that each succeeding Congress is to be held in a different colony, till the whole number be gone through, and so in perpetual rotation; and that, accordingly, the next Congress after the present shall be held at Annapolis, in Maryland. V. That the power and duty of the Congress shall extend to the determining on war and peace, the entering into alliances, the reconciliation with Great Britain, the settling all disputes between colony and colony, if any should arise, and the planting new colonies where proper. The Congress shall also make such general ordinances thought necessary to the general welfare, of which particular assemblies cannot be competent, viz those that may relate to our general commerce or general currency, to the establishment of posts, the regulation of our common forces; the Congress shall also have the appointment of all officers, civil and military, appertaining to the general confederacy, such as general treasurer, secretary, &c. &c. &c. VI. All charges of war, and all other general expenses to be incurred for the common welfare, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury, which is to be supplied by each colony, in proportion to its number of male polls between 16 and 60 years of age; the taxes for paying that proportion are to be laid and levied by the laws of each colony. VII. The number of delegates to be elected and sent to the Congress by each colony, shall be regulated from time to time, by the number of such polls returned, so as that one delegate shall be allowed for every 5000 polls. And the delegates are to bring with them to every Congress an authenticated return of the number of polls in their respective colonies, which is to be taken for the purposes above-mentioned. VIII. At every meeting of the Congress, one half of the members returned, exclusive of proxies, shall be necessary to make a quorum; and each delegate at the Congress, shall have a vote in all cases; and, if necessarily absent, shall be allowed to appoint any other delegate from the same colony to be his proxy, who may vote for him. IX. An Executive Council shall be appointed by the Congress out of their own body, consisting of twelve persons of whom, in the first appointment, one third, viz.: four shall be for one year, four for two years, and four for three years; and, as the said terms expire, the vacancies shall be filled up by appointment for three years, whereby one-third of the members shall be chosen annually; and each person who has served the same term of three years as counsellor, shall have a respite of three years before he can be elected again. This council, of whom two-thirds shall be a quorum, in the recess of the Congress is to execute what shall have been enjoined thereby; to manage the general continental business and interests, to receive applications from foreign countries, to prepare matters for the consideration of the Congress, to fill up, pro tempore, continental offices that fall vacant, and to draw on the general treasurer for such monies as may be necessary for general services, and appropriated by the Congress to such services. X. No colony shall engage in an offensive war with any nation of Indians without the consent of the Congress or great council above-mentioned, who are first to consider the justice and necessity of such war. XI. A perpetual alliance, offensive and defensive, is to be entered into, as soon as may be, with the Six Nations; their limits ascertained, and to be secured to them; these lands not to be encroached on; nor any private or colony purchase to be made of them hereafter to be held good, nor any contract for lands to be made but between the great council of the Indians at Onondaga and the general Congress. The boundaries and lands of all other Indians shall also be ascertained and secured to them in the same manner; and persons appointed to reside among them in proper districts, who shall take care to prevent injustice in the trade with them; and be enabled at our general expense, by occasional small supplies, to relieve their personal wants and distresses; and all purchases from them shall be by the Congress, for the general advantage and benefit of the United Colonies. XII. As all new institutions may have imperfections, which only time and experience can discover, it is agreed that the General Congress, from time to time, shall propose such amendments to this constitution as may be found necessary, which being approved by a majority of the colony assemblies, shall be equally binding with the rest of the articles of this confederation. XIII. Any and every colony from Great Britain upon the continent of North America, not at present engaged in our association, may, upon application, and joining the said association, be received into the confederation, viz.: Quebec, St. John's, Nova Scotia, Bermudas, and the East and West Floridas, and shall thereupon be entitled to all the advantages of our union, mutual assistance and commerce. These articles shall be proposed to the several provincial conventions or assemblies, to be by them considered; and, if approved, they are advised to empower their delegates to agree and ratify the same in the ensuing Congress; after which the union thereby established is to continue firm, till the terms of reconciliation proposed in the petition of the last Congress to the King are agreed to; till the acts, since made, restraining the American commerce and fisheries, are repealed; till reparation is made for the injury done to Boston by shutting up its port; for burning Charlestown, and for the expense of this unjust war; and till all the British troops are withdrawn from America. On the arrival of these events, the colonies are to return to their former connexions and friendship with Great Britain; but on failure thereof, this confederation is to be perpetual. [B, p. 90.] A Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled.* 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 [inherent anda] inalienable 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 *The parts struck out are printed in Italics, and enclosed in brackets. The additions are placed in foot-notes. ■ Certain inalienable rights. of the people to alter or 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 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. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations [begun ut a distinguished period and] 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 [expunge"] their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of [unremitting] injuries and usurpations, [among which appears no solitary fact to contradict the uniform tenor of the rest, but all 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 falsehood.] 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 [and continually] 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 meantime, 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. ■ Alter. b Repeated injuries. All having in direct object. He has [suffered"] the administration of justice, [totally to cease in some of the states] refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers. He has made [our] 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, [by a self-assumed power] and sent hither swarms of new officers to harass our people and eat out their substance. He has kept among us in times of peace standing armies [and ships of war] 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 jurisdisction foreign to our constitutions 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 [c] 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 [states]; 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 [ withdrawing his governors, and declaring us out of his allegiance and protection.] 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 complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy [] 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 [] 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 [of existence.] a Obstructed. By refusing his assent to laws. е By declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us. • Excited domestic insurrections among us, and has. |