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 certain unalienable 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 of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a 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, 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. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world: He has refused to 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, for opposing, with manly firinness, 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, ex. posed to all the danger of invasion from without, and convulsions within. 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. He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers. He has made 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, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance. He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies 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 jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, 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 depriving us, in many cases, of the benefit of trial by jury: For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses: 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 into these colonies: For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering, fundamentally, the powers of our governments: For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases what soever. He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection, and waging war against us. He has plundered our seas, ravished 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 scarcely paralled in the most barbarous ages, and totally 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 excited domestic insurrections among us, and has endeavored 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. 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. Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them, from time to time, of attempts made 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. 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. 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. JOHN HANCOCK. New Hampshire.-Josiah Bartlett, Wm. Whipple, Matthew Thornton. Massachusetts Bay.-Saml. Adams, John Adams, Robt. Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry. Rhode Island, etc.-Steph. Hopkins, William Ellery. Connecticut. Roger Sherman, Sam'l Huntington, Wm. Williams, Oliver Wolcott. New York.-Wm. Floyd, Phil. Livingston, Frans. Lewis, Lewis Morris. New Jersey.-Richd. Stockton, Jno. Witherspoon, Frans. Hopkinson, John Hart, Abra. Clark. Pennsylvania.-Robt. Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benja. Franklin, John Morton, Geo. Clymer, Jas. Smith, Geo. Taylor, James Wilson, Geo. Ross. Delaware.-Cæsar Rodney, Geo. Read, Tho. M'Kean. Maryland.-Samuel Chase, Wm. Paca, Thos. Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton. Virginia.-George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thos. Jefferson, Benja. Harrison, Thos. Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton. North Carolina.-Wm. Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn. South Carolina.-Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton. Georgia.-Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, Geo. Walton. Decoration Day. The observance of "Decoration Day” has grown spontaneously from the tender remembrance by the mothers, sisters, younger brothers, and all who survived the war for the Union, of the heroes who perished that we might live to enjoy a united, free, and just government. The practice of setting aside a day to visit the graves of their fallen soldiers, recall the memory of their noble deeds, and strew their tombs with flowers, took its rise early in the late war: first in particular places, here a city, there a village, or it might be a county. In some places it was on one day, in others on another. After a time the practice became more general. In some cases governors recommended the observance of a particular day; but there was no wide extended agreement. In time, partly through the influence of leading members of the Christian commission, which had done so much for soldiers during the war, partly through the influence of the pulpit and press, and, finally, through the systematic efforts of the Grand Army of the Republic and various veteran soldier associations, many State legislatures were induced to make a given day a legal holiday for this purpose, and the president and governors were led to unite in recommending the observance of the same day, now known as "Decoration Day" in nearly every State of the Union.. Precisely when, or in what community, the first instance of calling upon the citizens in general to come together for this purpose took place, it seems to be impossible at this late day to determine. It is claimed that there were instances of this kind as early as the spring of 1863, some say as early as the summer of 1862. De Fuca Explorations.-The boundary line on the far northwest had for many years been a serious question between the United States and Great Britain. That part of the Pacific coast had been visited, on behalf of Spain, by the Greek pilot De Fuca in 1592, by Admiral Fonte in 1640, and by subsequent explorers, who had mapped a great portion of it as far as the fifty-fifth degree north latitude. The Nootka treaty of 1790,between Spain and Great Britain, only gave the latter some fishing and trading rights in the vicinity of Puget Sound. The discovery and exploration of Columbia River by Captain Robert Gray, an American, who gave the name of his vessel to the river; the purchase of Louisiana and all that belonged to it to the Pacific from the French in 1803, their claim being the best, next to that of Spain; the exploration of Columbia River from its sources to its mouth by Lewis and Clarke, by order of the United States, in 1804-5; and the treaty of limits concluded between Spain and the United States in 1819, by which all the territory north of forty-two degrees north latitude was expressly declared to belong to the United States, were held to be sufficient proofs of the title of the United States to that territory. Still Great Britain laid claim to a large portion of the region. Captain Winship, a hardy New Englander, in 1810 built a house on the Columbia, but the floods came and the winds blew, and it fell the same year and the settlement was abandoned. The fort and fur-trading house at Astoria, established in 1811 by John Jacob Astor, were given up to the British, who were then engaged in the prosecution of the war of 1812. The place was then named Fort George. Subsequently it passed into the control of the Hudson Bay Company, and a feeble attempt was made to cultivate the soil. In the "forties" the immigration was large, and in '43 they formed a provisional government. For years previous to these events the boundary line question had been the subject of correspondence between Great Britain and the United States. At times the question |