Connecticut’s Resolution

“Whereas the King and Parliament of Great Britain…have claimed and attempted to exercise powers incompatible with, and subversive of the ancient, just, and constitutional rights of this and the rest of the English Colonies in America, and…after a series of accumulated wrong and injury, have proceeded to invade said Colonies with Fleets and Armies, to destroy our towns, shed the blood of our countrymen, and involve us in the calamities incident to war; and are endeavoring to reduce us to an abject surrender of our natural and stipulated rights, and subject our property to the most precarious dependence on their arbitrary will and pleasure, and our persons to slavery, and at length have declared us out of the King’s protection, have engaged foreign mercenaries against us, and are evidently and strenuously seeking our ruin and destruction…

“Resolved unanimously by this Assembly, that the Delegates of this Colony in General Congress, be, and they are hereby instructed to propose to that respectable body, to declare the United American Colonies, free and independent States, absolved from all allegiance to the King of Great Britain…

The resolution is in the Connecticut State Archive at the Connecticut State Library in Hartford.