THE YOUNG REVOLUTIONISTS, 1777
”We hold these truths to be self-evident: that we are in every point of view equal to the man denominated our school master Peter Puckeridge. We can run as fast, we can ride as well: we can shoot much better; and we are no way below him in fishing and trapping. And if any of us are his inferiors in reading, writing and cyphering, (and even this is doubtful) it is only the natural consequence of our youth and inexperience. In all essential qualifications we acknowledge no inferiority whatever.
“But our causes of complaint are of more serious moment: and after enduring a long train of abuses and vexations, it is our choice, it is our wish, to throw off his government, and declare ourselves independent.
“To prove this, let the following facts be submitted to our candid fellow-sufferers.
“He has refused to allow the eating of apples in school; even of the sorts least noisy, and best calculated to be managed without paring.
He has refused to permit the windows to be raised in the dog-days; and he has limited our water-drinking to four tin-cups-full a day; the said tin-cup holding but half a pint.
“He has refused to mend our pens even when the points were split apart like the prongs of a fork; and he has kept us in pot-hooks when we ought to have been in joining-hand.
“He has interdicted us from reading almanacs and other story-books, (even when our lessons were over) preferring that we should sit idle on the benches; and when reduced to this state of idleness, he has barbarously forbidden us the amusement of kicking our heels, or drumming with our fingers. He has particularly waged war against Robinson Crusoe: as if it were not better to employ ourselves with that most useful and entertaining of all books, than to sit listless and yawning till school-hours are over.
“He obliges us to learn, by heart, lessons of unusual length and on useless subjects, (grammar for instance) with the wicked and inhuman purpose of making us waste our play-hours in hard study: at the manifest risk of rendering our faces pale, our legs thin, and destroying all our natural smartness.
“He has kept us standing long after we should have been seated, listening to tedious explanations of cornets, and northern-lights, and milky ways, and other incomprehensible things, which nobody in this world can possibly understand, and least of all Peter
“He has called us in at times unusually early and uncomfortable, obliging us to quit our unfinished plays; and when we naturally refrained from obeying the summons, he has taken from us our kites, our marbles, our balls and our lops, and has deposited them in the gloomy recesses of his own desk: thereby subjecting us to the necessity of picking the lock or cutting holes in the bottom, as the only means of re-possessing ourselves of our lawful property.
“He is in the frequent practice of inflicting corporal chastisement when we find it necessary to stand opposed to him : with one exception—the writer of this declaration—on whom, as is well known, he has never yet ventured to lay the finger of violence.
“He has plundered our hats: he has ravaged our pockets: he has burnt our play-things: he has ruined our collars by shaking us with his inky hands; excepting always the writer of this declaration.
“But our most important and unanswerable reason for rejecting his tyranny is, that we know him to be possessed of high principles. We know him to take a childish interest, unbecoming to an American, in the comings and goings, the ratings and sweepings of the men called kings, and the women denominated queens; while he is at no pains whatever, to inform himself of the proceedings of Congress. Also, he has been heard to insist, most falsely and absurdly, that the red-coats of the British regulars have a more military look than the blue-coats of our own continental soldiers, and he has presumed to laugh at the militia who have no coats at all. Also, he has dared most t reasonably to sneer at the calico gown worn by the brave Colonel Prescott at the battle of Bunker Hill.
“Nor have we been wanting in indications of our dissatisfaction. We have tilted his desk by sawing off two inches from one of the legs; we have slipped his handkerchief from his pocket, and wiped up ink with it; we have cut sticks with his best pen-knife, and put burrs into his hat; and we are taken with unanimous coughs whenever he begins to talk to us. But as no warning has had any effect on him, and as he has not had the grace to retire from office as soon as he knew himself to be unpopular, we therefore absolve ourselves from all allegiance to him and his authority. We throw him off as we would an old coat, and we declare ourselves free and independent of Peter and that we will never more allow ourselves to be subjected by the frown of his brow, the sharpness of his voice, or the slaps of his ferule. And for the support of this declaration we mutually pledge to each other the heads that can plan, the hearts that can dare, and the hands that can execute.”
The Declaration of Independence in American
by H. L. Mencken, 1921
WHEN THINGS get so balled up that the people of a country got to cut loose from some other country, and go it on their own hook, without asking no permission from nobody, excepting maybe God Almighty, then they ought to let everybody know why they done it, so that everybody can see they are not trying to put nothing over on nobody.
All we got to say on this proposition is this: first, me and you is as good as anybody else, and maybe a damn sight better; second, nobody ain’t got no right to take away none of our rights; third, every man has got a right to live, to come and go as he pleases, and to have a good time whichever way he likes, so long as he don’t interfere with nobody else. That any government that don’t give a man them rights ain’t worth a damn; also, people ought to choose the kind of government they want themselves, and nobody else ought to have no say in the matter. That whenever any government don’t do this, then the people have got a right to give it the bum’s rush and put in one that will take care of their interests. Of course, that don’t mean having a revolution every day like them South American yellow-bellies, or every time some jobholder goes to work and does something he ain’t got no business to do. It is better to stand a little graft, etc., than to have revolutions all the time, like them coons, and any man that wasn’t a anarchist or one of them I.W.W.’s would say the same. But when things get so bad that a man ain’t hardly got no rights at all no more, but you might almost call him a slave, then everybody ought to get together and throw the grafters out, and put in new ones who won’t carry on so high and steal so much, and then watch them. This is the proposition the people of these Colonies is up against, and they have got tired of it, and won’t stand it no more. The administration of the present King, George III, has been rotten from the start, and when anybody kicked about it he always tried to get away with it by strong-arm work. Here is some of the rough stuff he has pulled:
He vetoed bills in the Legislature that everybody was in favor of, and hardly nobody was against.
He wouldn’t allow no law to be passed without it was first put up to him, and then he stuck it in his pocket and let on he forgot about it, and didn’t pay no attention to no kicks.
When people went to work and gone to him and asked him to put through a law about this or that, he give them their choice: either they had to shut down the Legislature and let him pass it all by himself, or they couldn’t have it at all.
He made the Legislature meet at one-horse tank-towns, so that hardly nobody could get there and most of the leaders would stay home and let him go to work and do things like he wanted.
He give the Legislature the air, and sent the members home every time they stood up to him and give him a call-down or bawled him out.
When a Legislature was busted up he wouldn’t allow no new one to be elected, so that there wasn’t nobody left to run things, but anybody could walk in and do whatever they pleased.
He tried to scare people outen moving into these States, and made it so hard for a wop or one of these here kikes to get his papers that he would rather stay home and not try it, and then, when he come in, he wouldn’t let him have no land, and so he either went home again or never come.
He monkeyed with the courts, and didn’t hire enough judges to do the work, and so a person had to wait so long for his case to come up that he got sick of waiting, and went home, and so never got what was coming to him.
He got the judges under his thumb by turning them out when they done anything he didn’t like, or by holding up their salaries, so that they had to knuckle down or not get no money.
He made a lot of new jobs, and give them to loafers that nobody knowed nothing about, and the poor people had to pay the bill, whether they could or not.
Without no war going on, he kept an army loafing around the country, no matter how much people kicked about it.
He let the army run things to suit theirself and never paid no attention whatsoever to nobody which didn’t wear no uniform.
He let grafters run loose, from God knows where, and give them the say in everything, and let them put over such things as the following:
Making poor people board and lodge a lot of soldiers they ain’t got no use for, and don’t want to see loafing around.
When the soldiers kill a man, framing it up so that they would get off.
Interfering with business.
Making us pay taxes without asking us whether we thought the things we had to pay taxes for was something that was worth paying taxes for or not.
When a man was arrested and asked for a jury trial, not letting him have no jury trial.
Chasing men out of the country, without being guilty of nothing, and trying them somewheres else for what they done here.
In countries that border on us, he put in bum governments, and then tried to spread them out, so that by and by they would take in this country too, or make our own government as bum as they was.
He never paid no attention whatever to the Constitution, but he went to work and repealed laws that everybody was satisfied with and hardly nobody was against, and tried to fix the government so that he could do whatever he pleased.
He busted up the Legislatures and let on he could do all the work better by himself.
Now he washes his hands of us and even goes to work and declares war on us, so we don’t owe him nothing, and whatever authority he ever had he ain’t got no more.
He has burned down towns, shot down people like dogs, and raised hell against us out on the ocean.
He hired whole regiments of Dutch, etc., to fight us, and told them they could have anything they wanted if they could take it away from us, and sicked these Dutch, etc., on us.
He grabbed our own people when he found them in ships on the ocean, and shoved guns into their hands, and made them fight against us, no matter how much they didn’t want to.
He stirred up the Indians, and give them arms and ammunition, and told them to go to it, and they have killed men, women and children, and don’t care which.
Every time he has went to work and pulled any of these things, we have went to work and put in a kick, but every time we have went to work and put in a kick he has went to work and did it again. When a man keeps on handing out such rough stuff all the time, all you can say is that he ain’t got no class and ain’t fitten to have no authority over people who have got any rights, and he ought to be kicked out.
When we complained to the English we didn’t get no more satisfaction. Almost every day we give them plenty of warning that the politicians over there was doing things to us that they didn’t have no right to do. We kept on reminding them who we was, and what we was doing here, and how we come to come here. We asked them to get us a square deal, and told them that if this thing kept on we’d have to do something about it and maybe they wouldn’t like it. But the more we talked, the more they didn’t pay no attention to us. Therefore, if they ain’t for us they must be agin us, and we are ready to give them the fight of their lives, or to shake hands when it is over.
Therefore be it resolved, That we, the representatives of the people of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, hereby declare as follows: That the United States, which was the United Colonies in former times, is now a free country, and ought to be; that we have throwed out the English King and don’t want to have nothing to do with him no more, and are not taking no more English orders no more; and that, being as we are now a free country, we can do anything that free countries can do, especially declare war, make peace, sign treaties, go into business, etc. And we swear on the Bible on this proposition, one and all, and agree to stick to it no matter what happens, whether we win or we lose, and whether we get away with it or get the worst of it, no matter whether we lose all our property by it or even get hung for it.
My History Notes 