Declaration of Independence
7
Vocabulary
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abdicated: gave up one's responsibilities
-
barbarous: being violently destructive
and cruel
-
brethren: a religious term for
brothers
-
desolation: loneliness, loss
-
executioners: persons who put
others to death
-
insurrections: acts of revolting
against authority
-
frontiers: areas that have not
been explored
-
mercenaries: professional soldiers
hired by a foreign country
-
paralleled: ran or was across
from
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perfidy: unfaithfulness, not
being trustworthy
-
plundered: took wrongfully,
stole, robbed
-
ravaged: destroyed, damaged
heavily
-
undistinguished: marked by no
special quality
Activities:
Rewrite each of the
following sentences of the Declaration of Independence in your own words in
the text boxes following each line. This webpage can be downloaded and saved
so that the rewriting can be done in a word processing program, it can be copy
and pasted into an e-mail to be shared or filled in and printed off.
32. He has abdicated
Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against
us.
33. He has plundered
our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns,
and destroyed the lives of our people.
34. He is at this time transporting
large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat
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.