Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms
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render that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and
which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot
endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that
wretchedness which inevitably awaits them, if we basely entail hereditary bondage upon them.
Our cause is just. Our union is perfect. Our internal resources are
great, and, if necessary, foreign assistance is undoubtedly attainable.—
We gratefully acknowledge, as signal instances of the Divine favor towards us, that his Providence would not permit us to be called into this
severe controversy, until we were grown up to our present strength, had
been previously exercised in warlike operation, and possessed of the
means of defending ourselves. With hearts fortified with these animating
reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that,
exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator has graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have been compelled
by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance, employ for the preservation of our
liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live
slaves.
Lest this declaration should disquiet the minds of our friends and
fellow-subjects in any part of the empire, we assure them that we mean
not to dissolve that union which has so long and so happily subsisted
between us, and which we sincerely wish to see restored.—Necessity has
not yet driven us into that desperate measure, or induced us to excite any
other nation to war against them.—We have not raised armies with ambitious designs of separating from Great-Britain, and establishing independent states. We fight not for glory or for conquest. We exhibit to
mankind the remarkable spectacle of a people attacked by unprovoked
enemies, without any imputation or even suspicion of offense. They
boast of their privileges and civilization, and yet proffer no milder conditions than servitude or death.
In our own native land, in defense of the freedom that is our birthright, and which we ever enjoyed till the late violation of it—for the protection of our property, acquired solely by the honest industry of our
forefathers and ourselves, against violence actually offered, we have taken
up arms. We shall lay them down when hostilities shall cease on the part