The Declaration of Independence doesn’t have a list of “grievances.” That word isn’t even in the text.
The Revolutionaries seceded from the British over a long list – a “long train” – of unconstitutional acts, what Thomas Jefferson called in the Declaration “abuses and usurpations” and “a history of repeated injuries and usurpations.”
Usurpation, as the founders used the word, is the exercise of unauthorized, illegal, unconstitutional power. Or to put it more bluntly, stealing power from its rightful source.
Even under the unwritten British constitution, the people understood there were limits on government power. Parliament and the King continually crossed those lines, enraging the colonists and ultimately leading to independence.
Over and over, the founders pounded home this theme: usurpation isn’t legitimate. It isn’t the law. It is “void.”
You see this messaging from the earliest days of the Revolution. Railing against writs of assistance in 1761, James Otis Jr. declared, “An act against the constitution is void.”
In Rights of Man, Thomas Paine argued that all power is either delegated by the people or is illegally taken by government.
“There are no other sources. All delegated power is trust, and all assumed power is usurpation.”
This principle carried forward to the ratification debates over the Constitution. In Massachusetts, Theophilus Parsons argued that the states and the people would be able to effectively resist usurpation, emphasizing, “An act of usurpation is not obligatory; it is not law; and any man may be justified in his resistance.”
Here at the Tenth Amendment Center, we are committed to not only pointing out usurpation but also equipping people to nullify it. However, we can’t do this work alone. We need your support to take a stand against an endless train of “abuses and usurpations” from the largest government in history – for decades.
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Some people claim usurpation is necessary. They seem to believe that sometimes government has to “get things done,” and that might require a little extra power, even if the Constitution doesn’t authorize it.
George Washington slammed the door on this approach in his farewell address, pointing first to the only legitimate way to delegate additional powers when they’re believed to be necessary.
“If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates.”
Washington understood, like all the great sons and daughters of the American Revolution, that usurpation was the tool the British used to establish a total tyranny over the people. So he called on us to reject it as dangerous, even if we like the short-term results.
“But let there be no change through usurpation. Though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit which the use can at any time yield.”
Usurpation – as Washington warned – is a WEAPON that destroys freedom.
- Usurpation: Weapon to Destroy Freedom - January 25, 2026
- Parchment barriers don’t stop tyranny - January 6, 2026
- Living Under the Consolidation the Founders Warned About - December 19, 2025