Minnesotans read Declaration of Independence

Saturday was July 4th, Independence Day, which is when this country commemorates the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. In it, 13 North American British colonies announced their separation from Great Britain. Today marks 250 years since the first public reading of the on July 8th, 1776. What follows is a long list of grievances and charges against King George III. The Declaration was written largely by Thomas Jefferson and edited by the Continental Congress. Among the edits, the Congress deletes a reference to, quote, Scotch and foreign mercenaries. Turns out they were members of Congress who were of Scottish descent. To win support from Southerners, the Congress removed criticism of the African slave trade. But a racist slur against Native Americans stayed. You're going to hear those words today. The Declaration is a document with flaws and deeply ingrained hypocrisies. It is also laying the foundation for our collective aspirations, our hopes for what this country could be. So in that spirit, here again is the Declaration of Independence. I'll now welcome the first readers. 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 entitled 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 powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute new government laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness. Prudence indeed will dictate that government long established should not be changed for light and transient causes and accordingly all experience have 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 usurpation pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them on their 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 now such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present king of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this let facts be submitted to a candid world. 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, 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 firmness his invasions of the rights of the people. He has 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 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 absence 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 officers 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 effected 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 quartering large bodies of armed troops among us for protecting them by 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 offenses. For abolishing the free system of English law in neighboring province established in their in an arbitrary government and enlarging the boundaries so as to render it once an example and a 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, dissolution, 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 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. 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 immigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity. We have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disvow these usurpations which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and consanguinity. We must therefore acquiescence 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 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 have right do. And for the support of declaration with firm reliance on the protection of divine providence we mutually pledge to each other our lives our fortunes and our sacred honor. On July 4th 1776 56 men affixed their names to the to the declaration of independence pledging their lives fortunes and sacred honors to the cause of American liberty. This act of defiance against British rule was a bold gamble carrying the weight of treason and the promise of uncertain futures. Five were captured by the British many suffered severe financial losses and saw their homes burned and looted. There was a cost for their patriotism. 250 years ago this Sunday church bells rang out over Philadelphia as the continental congress adopted this draft of the declaration of independence. In a few minutes our own cathedral of Saint Paul bells will ring commemorating these 250 years. Thank you all for sharing this historic moment with one another.