The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America
Dear George,
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.
When things get so bad between two people, it is only fair that the one being hurt explain why the relationship needs to end.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
We think it is seriously obvious: we are all really the same. Everyone just wants to live, freely and happily, and they must be allowed to do so.
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 to 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.
After all, that is why we were together in the first place. But our relationship no longer works like that. It is time to end this so that I can move on and find happiness with myself.
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, 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.
I’m not just complaining. I’m smarter than that. Our relationship is nothing more than a long list of things you’ve done to hurt me while all I have done is been patient with you. That is why I am breaking up with you.
To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
In case you don’t believe me, I’ll remind you of every awful thing you’ve done to me.
He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
1. When I told you what I needed, you ignored me.
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.
2. When you didn’t ignore me, you didn’t really care.
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.
3. Then you told me you would only listen to me if I agreed to never talk again.
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.
4. You told me to call you on your cell phone, but you kept changing your number so that I couldn’t reach you.
He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
5. And then when I finally did get a hold of you, you would hang up if I made you angry.
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.
6. You never let me express myself, and I almost had a mental breakdown.
He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
7. Then you told me I couldn’t look nice in public, because you were afraid someone else might like me.
He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
8. I told you that it wasn’t fair, but you didn’t care.
He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
9. You didn’t care what I had to say because you only ever listened to your friends.
He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
10. Not to mention, you have a lot of friends, and they’re all jerks, too.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.
11. I mean, seriously, you always invited your jerk friends over to our apartment even if I wasn’t cool with it.
He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.
12. You made your friends more important than me.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:
13. And if you thought I was done with this list, I’m just getting started. I have even more things you did wrong with the help of your jerk friends:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
14. You let all of your friend’s sleep over in our apartment, even though you knew they hated me.
For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:
15. Then, when they trashed my room, you yelled at me and told me that it was my fault.
For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:
16. You and your friends didn’t let me make my own friends.
For imposing taxes on us without our consent:
17. You and your friends would steal my money.
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:
18. And then you would tell me I only misplaced it.
For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:
19. And if I didn’t believe you, you took me to ask your friends. They would call me crazy and blame me.
For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring 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 in these colonies:
20. And don’t think I didn’t know about you flirting with the neighbor. You were trying to prove to me you could get anything you wanted.
For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:
21. You basically told me that every opinion I had was wrong.
For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
22. You didn’t even let me make up my own mind.
He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.
23. You told me you hated me.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
24. You made me kiss you when I didn’t want to.
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 scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
25. Even worse, you made me kiss all of your friends, too!
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.
26. You had me so hurt I began to blame myself.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
27. You even convinced the neighbors to hate me.
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.
Every time you did one of these things, I asked you nicely to stop. Every time I asked you nicely to stop, you did it again. You are so awful that I don’t think anyone else should date you either. You are completely un-datable.
Nor have we been wanting in attention 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.
I tried to explain things to your jerk friends. I told them of everything you did and how wrong you were, and I asked them how they would feel if they were me, but they were too stupid to listen.
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.
If your friends were nice, I could be friends with them, but since they are jerks, I am breaking up with them, too.
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 the 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.
For all these reasons I am leaving you. We are totally over. I owe you nothing. From now on I can be single or I can date whomever else I want, and if you try to stop me, I will have a restraining order put on you. Oh, and by the way, in case you thought I was alone in this, I had all my friends sign this letter, too. They have my back, so you better watch yours.
Sincerely,
A. Mary Kah
Jos, Will, Mattie, John, Sam, Jack, Bob, El, Steve, Bill, Roger, Sam, Billy, Oliver, Willy, Phil, Frank, Louie, Rick, Jonny, Fankie, Jake, George, Jim, Geo, Jimmy, Ross, Cesar, Read, Tom, Sam, Will, Tommy, Charley, Georgie, Rich, Thomas, Ben, Tim, Francis, Carter, William, Joe, John, Eddie, Tommy, Timmy, Art, Button, Lyman, and Jorge.
New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton