Arts, Crafts, Music, & Events of Breckinridge County Issue 2, July 2015 | Page 10

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, burned 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
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 attention to our British brethren.