While I was laying out the book, I decided to include a chapter on the Declaration of Independence. (Actually, it’s turning out to be a rather large chapter at that.) “But wait” you may ask, “if this is a book about the Constitution, why are you spending time on the Declaration?” In order to understand the Constitution, why it is constructed the way is, why the federal government is organized this way, and what we can do about it, you have to understand where the Constitution came from, and that is the Declaration.
The Constitution was not developed in a vacuum. Our founding fathers had spent the previous eight (8) years fighting their government to insure their independence. It seems reasonable they would take into consideration the reasons they declared independence in the first place?
What became known as the Declaration of Independence started out at the “Lee Resolution”. One of the most interesting statements in the resolution is:
Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States,
What was being created was not a single nation, but a group of united independent States. Lost after the Civil Was is the fact that each state declared itself to be of the same station as other states like Great Britain, France or Spain. This can also be seen in the first sentence of the Declaration itself:
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
The term “thirteen united States of America” is not a typo. The fact that “States” is capitalized shows that it is a noun, the object of the sentence, while “united” is lowercase because it is an adjective. It describes the states as being united, not a single nation.
Anyway, that’s what caught my attention as I started writing the chapter on The Declaration of Independence. I hope you enjoyed this post and will follow this blog. Please comment and ask questions; we learn best when we learn together.
