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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.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomforta ble, 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; the state remaining, in the mean time, exposed to all the dangers 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 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 offcers, 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 constitutions, 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 imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:
For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring prov-

ince, 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 forms of our governments :

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

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

He has plundered our seas, ravaged 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 paralleled 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 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.

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 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 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.

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II. REVOLUTIONARY REGISTER.

FIRST CONTINENTAL ARMY, 1775.

Commander in chief.
GEORGE WASHINGTON,

State.
Virginia,

Major Generals. State. Date of Comm. Major Generals.
Artemas Ward, Ms. June 17, 1775. Philip Schuyler,
Charles Lee,
Va.
do. 17, 1775. Israel Putnam,

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Wm. Lord Stirling, N. J. Feb. 19, 1777. William Moultrie,
Arthur St. Clair, Penn. do. 19, 1777. Henry Knox,

Date of Commission.
June 15, 1775.
State. Date of Comm.
N. Y. June 19, 1775.
Con. do. 19, 1775.

Date of Commission.

June 17, 1775. State. Date of Comm. Con. June 22, 1775. Ms. do. 22, 1775. N. H. do. 22, 1775. R. I. do. 22, 1775.

Date of Commission.

June 15, 1775.
State. Date of Comm.
N. C. Oct. 20, 1777.
N. Y. do. 20, 1777.
Pruss. May 5, 1778.
Md. Sept.15, 1780.
S. C. Nov. 14, 1780.
Ms. do. 15, 1780.

Benjamin Lincoln, Ms. do. 19, 1777. Le Chev. du Portail, Fran. do. 16, 1780. M. de Lafayette, Fran. July 31, 1777.

Brigadier Generals. State. Date of Comm.

Brigadier Generals. State. Date of Comm.

James Clinton, N. Y. Aug. 9, 1776. Jethro Sumner,
Lachlan McIntosh, Geo. Sept. 16, 1776. Isaac Huger,
John Patterson, Ms. Feb. 21, 1777. Mordecai Gist,
Anthony Wayne, Penn.do.

George Weeden, Va. do.
P. Muhlenburg, do.

George Clinton,
Edward Hand,
Charles Scott,

Jed. Huntington,

John Stark,

do.

1777. William Irvine, 1777. Daniel Morgan, 1777. Moses Hazen, N. Y. Mar. 25, 1777. C. H. Williams, Penn. April 1, 1777. John Greaton, Va. do. 2, 1777. Rufus Putnam, Con. May 12, 1777. Elias Dayton, N. H. Oct. 4, 1777.

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Major General Le Chevalier du Portail, Chief Engineer.
Major General Baron Steuben, Inspector General.

Colonel Walter Stewart, Inspector of the Northern Department.

Brigadier General Hand, Adjutant General.

Colonel Timothy Pickering, Quarter Master General.

John Cockran, Esq. Director General of Hospitals.

Thomas Edwards, Judge Advocate General

John Pierce, Esq. Paymaster General.

A TABLE showing the Force that Each of the Thirteen States supplied for the Regular Army from 1775 to 1783, inclusive.

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[From Niles's

Regulars.

2,386.

13,912

26,678.

7,263.

6,417.

2,679.

Total 231,791.

The total number of Continental Troops, according to the statement in the "Collections of the New Hampshire Historical Society," published in the first volume of this Almanac, was 231,971; Militia, 56,163.

Abstract of the Accounts of the respective States, for Expenses incurred during the Revolutionary War, as allowed by the Commissioners who finally settled said Accounts.-[From Pitkin's History of the U. States.]

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* Mr. Randolph, five or six days before the adjournment of Congress, was prevented from attending by ill health, and Mr. Middleton was chosen to supply his place. When the next Congress met, May 10th, 1775, Peyton Randolph was again chosen president, but being, on the 24th of the same month, obliged to return home, John Hancock was chosen to fill the vacancy.

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