NATIONAL HAND-BOOK: EMBRACING NUMEROUS INVALUABLE DOCUMENTS CONNECTED WITH THE Political History of America. AMONG WHICH ARE THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW OF 1850, KANSAS AND NEBRASKA ACT OF 1854, COMPROMISE OF 1820 Electoral Votes for President and Vice-President, FROM 1789 TO 1854, GREAT SEAL OF THE UNITED STATES, Seals of the Thirty-One States, with Descriptions and Illustrations WITH PORTRAITS OF EACH, LIVES AND PORTRAITS OF THE NOMINEES FOR PRESIDENT AND VICE-PRESIDENT, CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES, INTERSPERSED WITH THE INTERESTING INCIDENTS OF EACH ADMINISTRATION. FIFTY-TWO ILLUSTRATIONS. NEW YORK: JOHN G. WELLS, PUBLISHING AGENT, 11 BEEKMAN ST. 1856. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, by JOHN G. WELLS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York. JOHN G. WELLS, Printer and Stereotyper, THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY 5 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. IN CONGRESS-THURSDAY, JULY 4, 1776. AGREEABLY to the order of the day, the Congress resolved itself into a committee of the whole, to take into their further consideration the Declaration; and after some time the President resumed the chair, and Mr. Harrison reported that the committee had agreed to a declaration, which they desired him to report. (The committee consisted of Jefferson, Franklin, John Adams, Sherman, and R. R. Livingston.) The Declaration being read, was agreed to, as follows: BY THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, IN CONGRESS ASSEMBLED. 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. 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 a 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 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: |