The Declaration of Independence at 250

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America, as read by Professor Greg Jackson and fellow citizens: Lindsey Cormack co-host of Government That Doesn’t Suck https://open.spotify.com/show/033ABGLmH2FyHIjcnM6fNc?si=92847624a41e4b88&nd=1&dlsi=79e4cbb4a79b4981, Ben Sawyer and Bob Crawford of The Road to Now https://theroadtonow.com/, Colleen Shogan of In Pursuit https://www.inpursuit.org/podcast, Lindsay Graham host of History Daily https://www.historydaily.com/. Watch Prof. Jackson's PBS special here: The Unlikely Union: A Storytelling Symphony of America https://www.pbs.org/show/the-unlikely-union-a-storytelling-symphony/ or visit htdspodcast.com/pbs http://htdspodcast.com/pbs.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:08Greg Jackson?

  250 years ago, leaders from 13 separate colonies gathered in Philadelphia and made a terrifying and bold decision. They announced their collective separation from the British Empire. They did so with a stated willingness to risk their lives, their fortunes, and their honor. They didn't agree on everything, not every delegate signed, and New York's delegates abstained out of deference to the mix of feelings in the Empire colony-turning state. Nonetheless, they made a transcendent statement on unalienable rights and took this bold, unified step into the dark. In that spirit of unity, I collaborated with several of my history podcast colleagues to record a reading of the Declaration of Independence. Whether you've read the entire

• 0:51Greg Jackson?

  text before or not, I encourage you to listen and absorb the power of its words and ideas right now. July 4th, of course, is the date that commemorates the adoption of the Declaration itself, but we are releasing this recording today, July 2nd, the date John Adams would regard as America's Independence Day, because it was, in fact, the date of the Continental Congress's actual vote for independence. If you'd like to go deeper over the holiday weekend, I invite you to watch my PBS special, "The Unlikely Union," a storytelling symphony of America which covers the first century of our nation's founding. It's recorded with a full orchestra of my touring live show. You can stream it for free throughout the rest of the summer on the PBS app or at pbs.org.

• 1:34Greg Jackson?

  Simply search for the title, "The Unlikely Union," and click the link in the episode description, or visit our website at htdspodcast.com.

• 1:43Greg Jackson?

  And now, I'm pleased to share the Declaration of Independence as read by familiar voices, including Lindsey Cormack, my co-host on the new show "Government That Doesn't Suck," Ben Sawyer and Bob Crawford of the Road to Now podcast, Colleen Shogan of In Pursuit podcast, and my dear friend Lindsey "Not the Senator" Graham, host of History Daily, American Storytellers, and American Scandal.

• 2:11Speaker 01

  In Congress, July 4, 1776, The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America.

• 2:20Speaker 02

  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.

• 2:43Greg Jackson?

  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.

• 2:57Speaker 03

  That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  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 affect their safety and happiness.

• 3:26Speaker 04

  Prudence and deed will dictate the governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes. And accordingly, all experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the form to which they are accustomed.

• 3:41Speaker 03

  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.

• 3:59Greg Jackson?

  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.

• 4:24Speaker 05

  He has refused his 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.

• 5:06Speaker 05

  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 firmness 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,

• 5:50Speaker 05

  the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

• 5:59Speaker 02

  He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states, for that purpose obstructing the laws for the naturalization of foreigners, refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations 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.

• 6:39Speaker 02

  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.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us.

• 7:00Greg Jackson?

  For protecting them by a mock trial from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states.

• 7:07Speaker 04

  For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world.

• 7:10Speaker 03

  For imposing taxes on us without our consent.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  For depriving us in many cases of the benefits of trial by jury.

• 7:18Greg Jackson?

  For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses.

• 7:23Speaker 04

  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.

• 7:37Speaker 03

  For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  For suspending our own legislatures and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

• 7:53Speaker 02

  He has abdicated government here by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

• 7:59Greg Jackson?

  He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

• 8:07Speaker 04

  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.

• 8:22Speaker 03

  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.

• 8:34Greg Jackson?

  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 an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  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.

• 9:07Greg Jackson?

  Nor have we been wanting in attentions 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 immigration 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.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and 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.

• 9:53Speaker 03

  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.

• 10:20Speaker 04

  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 have 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.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  Happy birthday, America. You are an inspiring, infuriating, incredible, and improving place. May you and the world live up to your ideals.

• 11:13Greg Jackson?

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• 11:53Greg Jackson?

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• 12:34Greg Jackson?

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• 13:14Greg Jackson?

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