THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
JOHN TRUMBULL'S FAMOUS PAINTING.
PREAMBLE TO THE CONSTITUTION
We the people of the United States, in order to form
a more perfect union, establish Justice, insure domestic
tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote
the general welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty
to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish
the Constitution for the United States of America.
BILL OF RIGHTS
The United States Bill of Rights were the ten amendments
added to the Constitution in 1791.
The Constitution established our three branches of
Government: Legislative, Executive, and Judicial, and
was adopted on Sept. 17, 1787 by the Constitution Convention
in Philadelphia.
The DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE was an act of the Second
Continental Congress, adopted on July 4, 1776, which
declared that the Thirteen United Colonies "are,
and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States;
that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to Great
Britain." It proclaimed that they formed a new
nation called the "United States of America"
that would "assume, among the powers of the earth,
a separate and equal station." The Declaration,
written chiefly by Thomas Jefferson, explained the justifications
for breaking away, and was an expansion of the July
2 Lee Resolution, which first proclaimed independence.
Abraham Lincoln most succinctly explained the central
importance of the Declaration to American history in
his Gettysburg Address of 1863:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought
forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in
liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men
are created equal.
EXERPTS FROM THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
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 Laws of Nature and 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.
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