Test Script Type:

Manual Test

Test Script Description:

Test Script validates the primary provisions of the Declaration of Independence

Environment:

United States of America

Document Name

Document Identifier

Declaration of Independence

DofI

Bill of Rights

BofR

1     

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds 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.

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·        He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

·        He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance…

·        He has refused to pass other laws for the ...

·        He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual....

·        He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly…

·          

2     

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.

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That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to 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.

·         Happiness

3     

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.

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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.

4     

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.

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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.

1     

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

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·        He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance,

·        He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people,

·         He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable

2     

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

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3     

·        He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

·        He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

·        He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

·        He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

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·        He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

·        He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

4     

·        For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

·        For protecting them, by mock trial, from

·        For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

·        For imposing taxes on us without our           consent:

·        For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

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·        For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

·        For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

1     

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

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·         For taking away our charters,

·         abolishing our most valuable laws, and

·         altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

2     

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

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He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time

·        transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries

·        to complete the works of death, desolation and

·        tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and

·        totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

3     

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

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·         He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers,

·         the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished

·         destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

4     

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

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·         Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren.

·         We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us.

·         We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here.

5     

We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence.

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·         They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity.

·         We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as

·         we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

6     

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions,

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·         do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and

·         of right ought to be free and independent states;

·         that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between

·         them and the state of Great Britain, is and

·         ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full

·         power to levy war,

·         conclude peace,

·         contract alliances,

·         establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do.

1     

New Hampshire:

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·        Josiah Bartlett,

·        William Whipple,

·        Matthew Thornton

2     

Massachusetts:

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·        John Hancock,

·        Samual Adams,

·        John Adams,

·        Robert Treat Paine,

·        Elbridge Gerry

3     

. Rhode Island:

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·         Stephen Hopkins,

·         William Ellery

4     

Connecticut:

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·         Roger Sherman,

·         Samuel Huntington,

·         William Williams,

·         Oliver Wolcott

5     

New York:

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·        William Floyd,

·        Philip Livingston,

·        Francis Lewis,

·        Lewis Morris

6     

New Jersey:

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·         Richard Stockton,

·         John Witherspoon,

·         Francis Hopkinson,

·         John Hart,

·         Abraham Clark

7     

Pennsylvania:

·        Robert Morris,

·        Benjamin Rush,

·        Benjamin Franklin,

·        John Morton,

·        George Clymer,

·        James Smith,

·        George Taylor,

·        James Wilson,

·        George Ross

8     

Delaware:

·        Caesar Rodney,

·        George Read,

·        Thomas McKean

9     

Maryland:

·        Samuel Chase,

·        William Paca,

·        Thomas Stone,

·        Charles Carroll of Carrollton

10 

Virginia:

·        George Wythe,

·        Richard Henry Lee,

·        Thomas Jefferson,

·        Benjamin Harrison,

·        Thomas Nelson, Jr.,

·        Francis Lightfoot Lee,

·        Carter Braxton

11 

North Carolina:

·        William Hooper,

·        Joseph Hewes,

·        John Penn

12 

South Carolina:

·        Edward Rutledge,

·        Thomas Heyward, Jr.,

·        Thomas Lynch, Jr.,

·        Arthur Middleton

13 

Georgia:

·        Button Gwinnett,

·        Lyman Hall,

·        George Walton

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