Meeting transcript
250th Reading of Declaration of Independence
July 8, 2026 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
Machine-generated transcript — check the video if in doubt.
Again, thank you for coming. So this is called sharing the spirit of America. So the Sons of the American Revolution are sponsoring this program. All Americans are invited to come together and participate in Sharing the Spirit of America, a program that commemorates the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on 07/04/1776, and its first public reading that was done on 07/08/1776. That's why we're here today. So an important aspect of sharing the spirit of America is that the reading of the Declaration of Independence will be simultaneous. Each location nationally and internationally will read at their own local time wherever they are that correlates with 6PM Eastern. So this paper says that people all apparently they've contacted people all over the world in all the five fifty states, five territories, Midway, Wake Island,
Europe, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands. And even this little pamphlet was printed out by the Sons of the American Revolution in Hawaii. So, you know, Hawaii, as you all know, is our last state. So, but they're leading the charge for this little reading here. So again, I thank you all for coming and we can start with, you each have a card, they're in number order. So Ann will be number one.
Declaration of Independence in Congress, 07/04/1776. The unanimous declaration of the 13 United States Of America. 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 power from the consent of the governed. That when any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its power in such form as to them shall seem most likely to affect 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 has 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 system of government. The history of the present king of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries, usurpations, all having indirect object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. States. To prove this, let the facts be submitted to a candid world.
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 ascent 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 were to 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 firmless firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused for a long time after such disillusions 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 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 hours.
Has made judges dependent on his world on his will alone for the tenure of their offices and the amount of payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of new offices and sent hither forms of officers to harness our people and eat out their substance. He has kept among us in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature. 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 courting large bodies for armed troops among us.
For protecting them by a mock trial from punishment for all murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states.
For cutting off our trades 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 offenses.
For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighborhood neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government and enlarging its boundaries so as
So as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule onto these colonies, for taking away our charts, abolishing our most invaluable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our government, for suspending our own legislatures and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He's 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 of 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 a 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 unwarrantable judge jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our immigration settlement here. We've appealed to their native justice and magnanimity,
and we have conjured them by 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 in our accounts' ingenuity. We must therefore acquiesce in the necessity This denounces our separation and hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war and in peace, friends.
We therefore, the representative 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 upright 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 in the state of Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved. And that as free and independent states that have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and do all other acts and things which independent states may upright 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 fortune, and our sacred honor.
This is the signatures of the original declaration. There were 56 signatures from the state of Georgia was Button, Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton. From North Carolina, William Hopper or Hooper, Joseph Hughes, John Penn. From South Carolina, Edward Rutledge, Thomas Hayward Jr, Thomas Lynch Jr, Arthur Middleton. From Maryland, Samuel Chase, sorry, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, and from Virginia, George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harris, Thomas Nelson Jr, Francis Leifet Lee, and Carter Braxton.
And continuing the signatures from Pennsylvania, Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Climber, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross, and from Delaware, Cesar Rodney, George Reed, Thomas McKean. From New York, William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris. From New Jersey, Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hop Hopkinson, John Hart, and Abraham Clark.
New Hampshire, Matthew Thornton, Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Massachusetts, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Payne, Eldridge Jerry, John Hancock, Rhode Island, Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery, Connecticut, Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, and Oliver Wilco.
Thank you all for showing up. I really appreciate it. In December we're having the Reads Across America event so please
save your time on that. It'll be the nineteenth I think this year. There'll be some more announcements but that's another great community event that we hold.