LAD: Declaration of Independence

Summary
The Declaration of Independence

As all men were created equal under God their Creator, with certain rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; it is the government’s duty to uphold these rights for all their people. In the case of these colonies however, once a governmental body becomes destructive and has inflicted a long train of abuses and sufferance on its people, it becomes the duty of the governed to break free from these inauspicious institute of men and form a new government for themselves. Facts condemning the British Crown for its acts of tyranny and oppression involve the following:
• The King has refused to assent to laws, and the passing of important laws of accommodation
• He has constricted the government in the colonies by repetitiously dissolving representative houses, establishing uncomfortable places of meeting, confining the population of states, making judges dependant on his word alone, and erecting standing armies in peace times without consent.
• He has rendered the military superior to civil power, subjected the colonies to foreign jurisdiction, cutting of trade, imposing taxes, depriving us of trial by jury, unjustly trying us overseas without pretense, exposing us to an arbitrary government, taking away charters, abolishing laws of value, and suspending our own legislature.
• He has reprehensibly importing foreign armies for barbarous death and destruction, taken complete control of the high seas, and excited domestic insurrection among us.
Through this outrageous subjugation, we have unsuccessfully repeated petitions, only to be disregarded by a the tyrant of the British government. We have not only reminded them of the conditions of our settlement in abroad, but have appealed to their native justice and munificence. Because of the lack of reply and resolution, it was our obligation to initiate a separation. Thus, we the people of the Untied States of America under the General Assembly and the Supreme Judge declare ourselves free and independent states. It is with honor and confidence that we have the full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce for ourselves.