d and
rewrite the very best of prose. Still the changes were too many for the
red-haired delegate from Albemarle County, Virginia, who possessed an
ample store of pride in his own words. Jefferson thought his version had
been manhandled; Lee went further and said it had been "mangled".

The preamble to the Declaration of Independence is timeless. There in
clear and unmistakable language is a rationale for revolution, not just
1776, but all revolutions.

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 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 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 effect 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 hath 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 Systems of Government. The
history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated
injuries and usurpati