ons, 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.

The last thread which held the colonies to Britain was the king and to
cut that thread Jefferson and the Congress charged him with all the acts
of parliament and the ministries. As Dumas Malone remarks:

The charges in the Declaration were directed, not against the British
people or the British Parliament, but against the King. There was a
definite purpose in this. Jefferson, and the great body of the
Patriots with him, had already repudiated the authority of
Parliament.... Now ... the onus must be put on George III himself.
Such a personification of grievances was unwarranted on strict
historical grounds. This was the language of political controversy,
not that of dispassionate scholarship.[35]

[35] Malone, Jefferson the Virginian, 224.

Parliament, in fact, is not mentioned at all. Jefferson would not even
acknowledge its existence, referring to it instead as "others" who have
joined with the king in these "repeated injuries and usurpations." But
before we worry too much about the king and sympathize with those who
believe "poor George" has suffered unnecessary abuse, let us remember
that we now know the king, while neither vindictive nor a tyrant, was an
adherent to the policies proposed by his ministers which brought disunion
to the empire.

On July 4, 1776, by a vote of 12-0, with New York abstaining, the
colonies voted independence. On July 8 the Declaration was read publicly.
On July 15 New York voted "yes". And on August 2 most delegates signed
the formal Declaration itself. (The last signer did not put his signature
on it until 1781.)

Just as George Washington misjudged himself and history when he remarked,
"Remember, Mr. Henry, what I now tell you: from the day I enter upon the
command of the American armies, I date my fall, and the ruin of my
reputation," so Jefferson thought little of his composition. He was much
more interested in and concerned about the Virginia Constitution. At
first he was not identified as the author of the Declaration, for the
names of all those who signed were not revealed until January 1777. He
was wrong, of course, as the judgment of time has confirmed. The
Declaration is the greatest political statement written by an American.
To the citizens of the United States it was, and has r