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.

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 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
shewn, 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.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union,
establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,
promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves
and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United
States of America.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a
new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men
are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether
that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a
portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their
lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we
should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot
hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have
consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will
little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what
they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the
unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us.

Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet
sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not
thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and
raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the tumult soon
subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.

The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind. Many
circumstances hath, and will arise, which are not local, but universal, and
through which the principles of all Lovers of Mankind are affected, and in the
Event of which, their Affections are interested. The laying a Country desolate
with Fire and Sword, declaring War against the natural rights of all Mankind,
and extirpating the Defenders thereof from the Face of the Earth, is the
Concern of every Man to whom Nature hath given the Power of feeling.

After an unequivocal experience of the inefficiency of the subsisting federal
government, you are called upon to deliberate on a new Constitution for the
United States of America. The subject speaks its own importance; comprehending
in its consequences nothing less than the existence of the Union, the safety
and welfare of the parts of which it is composed, the fate of an empire in many
respects the most interesting in the world.

It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the
people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important
question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing
good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever
destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force.
If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may
with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made.
