The Declaration of the Causes and Necessity for Taking Up Arms
A year before the Declaration of Independence, the Continental Congress was busy with another declaration. In this one, which was known as the “Declaration of the Causes and Necessity for Taking Up Arms”, they wanted to “make known the Justice of our Cause” and explain why they were fighting against the British.
What reasons did they give for fighting against their mother country? Here are some of them:
- Parliament had made a number of laws that hurt the colonies in one way or another.
- Parliament had declared that it had total right to make laws for the colonies “in all Cases whatsoever.”
- The British government had “sent over Fleets and Armies to enforce” their oppressive policies.
- Asking the King and Parliament to change their policies had done no good.
- British General Thomas Gage’s troops had started the war by making “an unprovoked Assault on the Inhabitants of [Massachusetts], at the Town of Lexington” and at Concord. “His [Gage’s] Troops have butchered our Countrymen, have wantonly burnt Charlestown, besides a considerable number of Houses in other Places; our Ships and Vessels are seized; the necessary supplies of Provisions are intercepted, and he is exerting his utmost Power to spread destruction and devastation around him.”
All of this, and a number of other things listed in the declaration, had brought the colonists to a crisis: “We are reduced to the alternative of chusing an unconditional Submission to the tyranny…, or resistance by Force. The latter is our choice”, they said, and they declared that they were “resolved to die Freemen rather than to live Slaves.”
But, they reassured their fellow British subjects, they still wanted to be part of the British empire; they were not trying to become independent — at least, not yet.
They closed with a statement of their determination, and an appeal to heaven to help resolve the conflict:
In our own native Land, in defence of the Freedom that is our Birthright, and which we ever enjoyed till the late Violation of it—for the protection of our Property, acquired solely by the honest Industry of our fore-fathers and ourselves, against Violence actually offered, we have taken up Arms. We shall lay them down when Hostilities shall cease on the part of the Aggressors, and all danger of their being renewed shall be removed, and not before.
With an humble Confidence in the Mercies of the supreme and impartial Judge and Ruler of the Universe, we most devoutly implore his Divine Goodness to protect us happily through this great Conflict, to dispose our Adversaries to reconciliation on reasonable Terms, and thereby to relieve the Empire from the Calamities of civil War.
Notes
The declaration was written by Thomas Jefferson and John Dickinson; that is, Jefferson wrote the first drafts, and Dickinson added or removed a number of things before the whole Congress reviewed it and made the final changes.
Source
“IV. The Declaration as Adopted by Congress, [6 July 1775],” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed April 11, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-01-02-0113-0005. [Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 1, 1760–1776, ed. Julian P. Boyd. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950, pp. 213–219.]