Latest / OneLegUpAlex Media / Alex Recites the Declaration of Independence , 250 Years After Washington Read In NYC - July 9, 2026

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Alex Recites the Declaration of Independence , 250 Years After Washington Read In NYC - July 9, 2026 · OneLegUpAlex Media

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  Speaker 1: On July ninth, seventeen seventy six, George Washington and the
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  Speaker 1: New York delegation met at City Hall Park while what
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  Speaker 1: is now City Hall Park, and George Washington read aloud
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  Speaker 1: for New York for the very first time in New
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  Speaker 1: York the Declaration of Independence. And so here at one
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  Speaker 1: look up alex Media in symmetry with two hundred and
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  Speaker 1: fifty years later, we're going to read the Declaration of
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  Speaker 1: Independence in New York in its entirety, the Declaration of
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  Speaker 1: Independence Action of the Second Continental Congress July fourth, seventeen
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  Speaker 1: seventy six, the Unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States
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  Speaker 1: of America. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, when in the course
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  Speaker 1: of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to
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  Speaker 1: dissolve the political bands which have connected them with one another,
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  Speaker 1: and to assume the powers of the earth, the separate
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  Speaker 1: and equal station to which the laws of nature and
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  Speaker 1: of Nature's God entitle them. A decent respect to the
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  Speaker 1: opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes
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  Speaker 1: which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths
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  Speaker 1: to be self evident, that all men are created equal,
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  Speaker 1: that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights,
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  Speaker 1: that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
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  Speaker 1: That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men,
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  Speaker 1: deriving their just powers from the consent of the government.
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  Speaker 1: That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends,
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  Speaker 1: it is the right of the people to alter or
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  Speaker 1: abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation
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  Speaker 1: on such principles, and organizing the powers in such form
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  Speaker 1: as to them shall seem most likely to affect their
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  Speaker 1: safety and happiness. Prudence indeed will dictate that governments along
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  Speaker 1: prudence indeed will dictate that governments long established should not
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  Speaker 1: be changed for light and transient causes. And accordingly, all
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  Speaker 1: experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer
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  Speaker 1: while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing
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  Speaker 1: the forms to which they are accustomed, but which a
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  Speaker 1: long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same
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  Speaker 1: object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism.
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  Speaker 1: It is their right, it is their duty, to throw
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  Speaker 1: off such government, and to provide new guards for their
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  Speaker 1: future security. Such has been the patient's sufferance of these colonies,
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  Speaker 1: and such as now the necessity which constrains them to
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  Speaker 1: alter their former systems of government. The history of the
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  Speaker 1: present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated
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  Speaker 1: injuries and usurpations, all having indirect object the establishment of
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  Speaker 1: an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove lists let
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  Speaker 1: facts be submitted to a candid world. He has refused
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  Speaker 1: to assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for
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  Speaker 1: the public good. He has forbidden his governors to pass
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  Speaker 1: laws of immediate and pressing importance unless suspended in their
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  Speaker 1: operation till his assent should be obtained, and when so suspended,
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  Speaker 1: he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has
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  Speaker 1: refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large
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  Speaker 1: districts of people unless these people would relinquish the right
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  Speaker 1: of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them
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  Speaker 1: and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative
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  Speaker 1: bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository
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  Speaker 1: of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing
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  Speaker 1: them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved representative
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  Speaker 1: houses repeatedly for opposing, with manly firmness his invasions on
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  Speaker 1: the rights of the people. He has refused, for a
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  Speaker 1: long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected,
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  Speaker 1: whereby the legislative powers incapable of annihilation have returned to
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  Speaker 1: the people at large for their exercise. The state remaining
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  Speaker 1: in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion
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  Speaker 1: from without and convulsions within, he has endeavored to prevent
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  Speaker 1: the population of these states. For that purpose, obstructing the
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  Speaker 1: laws for naturalization of foreigners, refusing to past others to
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  Speaker 1: encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new
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  Speaker 1: appropriations of lands. He has obstructed the administration of justice
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  Speaker 1: by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
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  Speaker 1: He has made judges dependent on his will alone for
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  Speaker 1: the tenure of their offices and the amount and payment
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  Speaker 1: of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of new offices,
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  Speaker 1: and said, hither swarms of officers to harass us out
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  Speaker 1: people and eat out their substance. He has kept among us,
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  Speaker 1: in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of
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  Speaker 1: our legislators. He has effected to render the military independent
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  Speaker 1: of and superior to the civil power. He has combined
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  Speaker 1: with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to
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  Speaker 1: our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his assents
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  Speaker 1: to their acts of pretended legislation. For quartering large bodies
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  Speaker 1: of armed troops among us, for protecting them by a
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  Speaker 1: mock trial from punishment for any murders which they should
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  Speaker 1: commit on the inhabitants of the States, for cutting off
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  Speaker 1: our trade with all parts of the world, for imposing
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  Speaker 1: taxes on us without our consent, for depriving us, in
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  Speaker 1: many cases of the benefits of trial by jury, for
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  Speaker 1: transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses,
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  Speaker 1: For abolishing the system of English laws and the neighboring province,
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  Speaker 1: establishing therein an arbitrary government, and in larging its boundaries,
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  Speaker 1: so as to render it at once an example and
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  Speaker 1: fit instrument, for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies.
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  Speaker 1: For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws
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  Speaker 1: and altering fundamentally the forms of our government, For suspending
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  Speaker 1: our own legislatures and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate.
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  Speaker 1: For all of us in cases whatsoever. He has abdicated
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  Speaker 1: government here by declaring us out of his protection and
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  Speaker 1: waging war against us. He has plundered our sees, ravaged
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  Speaker 1: our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of
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  Speaker 1: our people. He, at this time is transporting large armies
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  Speaker 1: of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation,
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  Speaker 1: and tyranny already begun, with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy
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  Speaker 1: scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy
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  Speaker 1: the head of a civilized nation. He has trained our
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  Speaker 1: fellow citizens, taken captive on the high seas, to bear
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  Speaker 1: arms against their country, to become the executioners of their
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  Speaker 1: friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.
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  Speaker 1: He has excited domestic insurrections among us, and has endeavored
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  Speaker 1: to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless
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  Speaker 1: Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished
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  Speaker 1: destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions. In every stage
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  Speaker 1: of these impressions, we have petitioned for redress in the
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  Speaker 1: most humble terms. Our repeated petitions have been answered only
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  Speaker 1: by repeated injury. A prince whose character is thus marked
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  Speaker 1: by every act which may define its tyrant, is unfit
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  Speaker 1: to be the ruler of a free people. Nor have
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  Speaker 1: we been wanting an attendance toward British brethren. We have
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  Speaker 1: warned them from time to time of attempts by their
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  Speaker 1: legislator a legislature, to extend an unwarranted jurisdiction over us.
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  Speaker 1: We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration
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  Speaker 1: and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice
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  Speaker 1: and magnanimity, and we have conjured them, by the ties
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  Speaker 1: of our common kindred, to disavow their usurpations, which would
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  Speaker 1: inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too, have been
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  Speaker 1: deaf to the voice of justice and cons ingenuity. We
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  Speaker 1: must therefore acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our separation,
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  Speaker 1: and hold them as we hold the rest in mankind,
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  Speaker 1: enemies in war and in peace. Friends. We therefore, the
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  Speaker 1: Representatives of the United States of America in General, Congress Assembled,
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  Speaker 1: appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the
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  Speaker 1: rectitude of our intentions, due in the name and by
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  Speaker 1: the authority of the good people of these colonies solemnly
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  Speaker 1: publish and declare that these United Colonies are, and of
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  Speaker 1: right ought to be free and independent states. That they
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  Speaker 1: are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and
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  Speaker 1: that they all political connection between them and the State
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  Speaker 1: of Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved.
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  Speaker 1: And that as free and independent states, they have full
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  Speaker 1: power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce,
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  Speaker 1: and to do all other acts and things which independent
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  Speaker 1: states may have right to do. And for the support
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  Speaker 1: of this declaration, with a firm alliance on the protection
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  Speaker 1: of Divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives,
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  Speaker 1: our fortune, and our sacred And that is the Declaration
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  Speaker 1: of Independence, as written by Thomas Jefferson July fourth, seventeen
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  Speaker 1: seventy six, read here in New York City for the
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  Speaker 1: first time two hundred and fifty years ago on July nineteen,
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  Speaker 1: seventeen seventy six, and being in Philly yesterday watching that,
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  Speaker 1: seeing the bunting outside Thomas Jefferson's house and the bunting
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  Speaker 1: on the Independence Hall, it reminds me that this month
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  Speaker 1: is a very special month for America and we'll continue
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  Speaker 1: to have highlights as we are going to Philadelphia for
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  Speaker 1: the All Star Game weekend this next Saturday, July eleventh,
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  Speaker 1: So stay tuned with us as we will celebrate America
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  Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty years and a week later in existence.
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  Speaker 1: May God bless America, and may our history never be
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  Speaker 1: torn down or rewritten or erased. This is our declaration
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  Speaker 1: of independence and no one can take it away from us,
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  Speaker 1: not even those who refuse to read it. That's my message.
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  Speaker 1: At one look up alex Media