“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 entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

A little trivia, by 1776, we’d actually been working on declaring our independence for years:

• 1773: the Boston Tea Party took place as a protest against British taxation of colonial tea
• 1774: the First Continental Congress began meeting to discuss what to do about Britain’s imposing unfair laws on the colonies.
• 1775: the Revolutionary War began on April 19, 1775, with the battles at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, and would continue until 1783 with America’s victory at Yorktown, Virginia

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Be careful out there.