and independent states,] and 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. 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. 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.] A Declaration by the Representatives of the UMTED STATES under around them to colect any pores, it is their right, it is their 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 the necessity which constrains them to [expunge] their former systems of government thing of Great Britain the to * alter the history of present negaty which, usurpations, [among appears repeated is a history of [unremitting injuries and solitary fact по butfall to contra -dict the uniform tenor of the rest, att of which [have] in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny submitted to a candid world, [ for yet unsullied by falsehood ] over these states to prove this let facts be the truth of which we pledge a faith me most wholesome and necessary for the mut lic good. montance. Heet Radni dom w koj varon aimes of peace, sanding armies [& ships of war he has affected to render the military, independent of & superior to the cuil power: our he has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitu- which 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; for transporting us beyond seas to be tried, for abolishing the free system of English laws in a and enlarg for pretended offences it; boxindaries on as to render it at once an neighboring province, establishing thereon example & fir instiment for introducing an arbitrary govemment the same absolute. |