We should be wanting to ourselves, we should be perfidious to posterity, we should be unworthy that free ancestry from which we derive our descent, should we submit with folded arms to military butchery & depredation ….

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)

“Declaration of the Causes and Necessity for Taking Up Arms” (1775-07-06) [with John Dickinson]
    (Source)

Final draft as approved by the Continental Congress.