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    The United States Constitution and Other Historical Documents
    The United States Constitution and Other Historical Documents
    The United States Constitution and Other Historical Documents
    Ebook89 pages1 hour

    The United States Constitution and Other Historical Documents

    By United States Continental Congress

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    About this ebook

    Presented here for the first time in one volume are the three founding documents of the United States and another that altered and divided the Union for a brief moment in history.
    • Declaration of Independence: Adopted by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, this may be the most famous angry letter in history. Written by Thomas Jefferson and addressed to King George III of England, it lays out the grievances of the king’s 13 colonies in North America, and announces that those colonies were now free of English rule. By 1783, after a long, bloody, and expensive war, that freedom became a reality.
    • Articles of Confederation: Soon after independence from England was declared, the Second Continental Congress instituted this first organizing document of the new United States, which was ratified in March 1781. A compromise between those delegates who wanted a strong central government and those who demanded that the states be sovereign, its shortcomings became obvious during the war--such as the fact that the central government had no power to collect taxes or even to enforce requests for funds from the states, which led to a perpetually underfunded revolution against England.
    • United States Constitution: This document replaced the Articles of Confederation on June 21, 1788. One of the most influential works of political philosophy and practicality ever written, it is the oldest national constitution still in use today, and continues to inspire freedom-loving peoples around the world. Its three-pronged system of government—balancing power among legislative, judicial, and executive branches—was groundbreaking. But it failed to address one issue, slavery, that would come to a head a century later.
    • Constitution of the Confederate States: This 1861 document organized the new nation created by the seceding slave states. While quite similar in many ways to the U.S. Constitution, it includes more references to God and religion and more emphasis on state sovereignty, offers specific clauses that seek to limit the influence of big business on politics, and codifies the right to own “negro slaves.”
    Together, these four documents offer a firsthand perspective on the political history of the United States.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCosimo Classics
    Release dateDec 1, 2010
    ISBN9781616409135
    The United States Constitution and Other Historical Documents
    Author

    United States Continental Congress

    The United States Continental Congress was a group of delegates from the thirteen original U.S. colonies that became the governing body for the United States during and immediately following the American Revolution, from 1774 to 1789. It is responsible for authoring the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the United States Constitution. It includes both the First and Second Continential Congress, and consisted of 56 delegates, including Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, John Hancock, and others.

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      The United States Constitution and Other Historical Documents - United States Continental Congress

      America

      THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

      ACTION OF SECOND CONTINENTAL CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

      The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

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

      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, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of 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. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. 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. 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. 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.

      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, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

      He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them, and formidable to tyrants only.

      He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

      He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

      He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining, in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasions from without, and convulsions within.

      He has endevoured to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

      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 legislatures.

      He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to the 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:

      For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

      For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

      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:

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

      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 into these colonies:

      For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

      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.

      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 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.

      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.

      He has excited domestic insurrections among us, and has

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