Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
CHAPTER ONE - THE REVOLUTIONARY ORIGINS OF THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION
CHAPTER TWO - AMERICA STRUGGLES TO ACHIEVE INDEPENDENCE, LIBERTY, AND UNION
CHAPTER THREE - THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION OF 1787
CHAPTER FOUR - THE CONTEST OVER RATIFICATION
CHAPTER FIVE - ESTABLISHING GOVERNMENT UNDER THE CONSTITUTION, 1789-1801
CHAPTER SIX - SUPREME COURT DECISIONS THAT HAVE SHAPED AMERICA’S CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
PENGUIN BOOKS
THE PENGUIN GUIDE TO THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION
RICHARD BEEMAN, currently a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania, has previously served as the chair of the Department of History, associate dean in Penn’s School of Arts and Sciences, and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. He serves as a trustee of the National Constitution Center and is chair of the Constitution Center’s Committee on Programs, Exhibits, and Education. Author of six previous books, Professor Beeman has received numerous grants and awards, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and the Huntington Library. His biography of Patrick Henry was a finalist for the National Book Award. He is, most recently, the author of Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution.
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First published in Penguin Books 2010
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
The Penguin guide to the United States Constitution : a fully annotated Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution and amendments, and selections from The Federalist Papers / Richard Beeman. p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-45900-3
1. Constitutional history—United States. 2. Constitutional history—United States—Sources. I. Beeman, Richard R. II. Penguin Books USA, Inc. III. Title: Guide to the United States Constitution. IV. Title: United States Constitution.
KF4541.P46 2010
342.7302’9—dc22 2010015820
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A NOTE ON THE TEXT
THE TEXTS IN THIS EDITION ARE BASED on the transcriptions of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution in the National Archives and Records Administration and on Jacob E. Cooke’s edition of The Federalist Papers. In some cases the punctuation in the documents reprinted in this edition has been altered for purposes of consistency and clarity; the eighteenth-century spelling in the original documents has been retained. Following the practice in Jacob E. Cooke’s The Federalist, the Penguin edition omits the original titles in each of the three essays reproduced from The Federalist Papers.
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 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.
This single opening sentence of the preamble to the Declaration of Independence displays brilliantly the ability of the document’s principal author, Thomas Jefferson, to convey a wealth of meaning in just a few elegant words. It announces the Americans’ intention of declaring their independence, of dissolving “the political bands” that had connected them to England. The justification for this extraordinary act was to be found in “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” Jefferson, a deist who did not believe that God played an active hand in the affairs of mankind, nevertheless did believe that certain natural laws were God-given. This first sentence also signals Jefferson’s awareness that a compelling public statement of the reasons for the decision to seek independence from England was necessary if America’s political leaders were going to earn the support not only of the people of their own colonies but, equally important, of foreign nations like France, whose support for the American military effort against England was considered crucial. Before declaring those “causes which impel them to separation,” however, Jefferson lays out the general philosophy on which America’s quest for independence was founded.
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.
The ideas embodied in the powerful opening lines of the second paragraph of the Declaration were not Jefferson’s alone. The late seventeenth-century English political philosopher John Locke had written in his Second Treatise of Civil Government that “life, liberty, and estate” were among the “natural rights” of mankind; they were rights that existed even before governments were created, at a time when mankind was living in a “state of nature.” Jefferson’s fellow Virginian George Mason, again following Locke, had included in the preamble of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, penned just a few weeks before Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, “That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights,” which he described as “the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.” But Jefferson’s language has more forceful simplicity. The assertion that “all men are created equal” was in 1776 more an as-yet-unfulfilled promise than a statement of political fact, but it has helped to define some of the highest aspirati
ons of the American nation throughout its history.
The opening lines of the second paragraph were, in fact, merely a preface to the real punch line of that paragraph: the assertion of the right to rebel against the government of England. Jefferson reminds his audience that the very purpose of government is to protect the natural rights of mankind. Since governments, at the time of their creation, base their authority on the consent of the people whom they are governing, then it is also the right of the people “to alter or to abolish” that government if its actions threaten the very liberties it was created to protect. Realizing the dangers of living in a society without government, Jefferson was quick to add that once the people had severed their connection with their government, they must move to form new governments whose principles and powers would be supportive of the people’s “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 suffer-able, 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.
The men representing their colonies in the Second Continental Congress had reached the decision to declare independence reluctantly, even painfully. They had a deep reverence for English common law and indeed for the body of law and custom that they called the “English constitution.” And nearly up to the moment of independence, many of those leaders expressed great affection for the institution of the monarchy. For all those reasons, the men who endorsed the Declaration of Independence wished to emphasize that their decision was not one arrived at rashly—that they had done everything within their power to find some alternative to the decision to revolt against the authority of the Crown, and that only the “long train of abuses” and the “repeated injuries and usurpations” committed by King George III had driven them to this final, decisive action.
Although Jefferson and those endorsing his Declaration were no doubt sincere in their protestations that independence was only a last resort after all other peaceful means of protecting their liberties had been exhausted, the Declaration’s description of the actions and motives of the English king and government is hardly an evenhanded recitation of the facts of the case. There is an element of hysteria—or perhaps of exaggeration for the purposes of propaganda—in the charge that the actions of the king and his government were deliberately designed to “reduce them [the American colonists] under absolute Despotism,” or that the entire reign of King George III, an imperfect but not evil sovereign, had been aimed at establishing an “absolute Tyranny” over the Americans. But given the purposes of the Declaration—to persuade an uncertain American public that revolution was the last and best hope and to persuade foreign nations to give their aid to that revolution—evenhandedness was not Jefferson’s highest priority. And so what followed was a long list—taking up more than two-thirds of the whole document—of the grievances that had impelled Americans to take such desperate measures.
1. He has refused his Assent to Laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
2. He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation until his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
6. 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 meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without and convulsions within.
7. He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
8. He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
9. He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices and the amount and payment of their salaries.
10. He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people and eat out their substance.
11. He has kept among us in times of peace Standing Armies, without the Consent of our legislatures.
12. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
13. 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:
14. For quartering large bodies of troops among us;
15. For protecting them by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States;
16. For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world;
17. For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent;
18. For depriving us in many cases of the benefits of Trial by Jury;
19. For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences;
20. For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring 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.
21. For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments.
22. For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
23. He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
24. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
25. 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.
26. 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.
27. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
The opening paragraphs of the Declaration display the talents of Thomas Jefferson as a literary stylist and a political philosopher. In the list of specific grievances, we see Jefferson the lawyer at work. It is an exhaustive—and wholly one-sided—bill of indictment of
British rule in America. On the one hand, there is a monotony to the recitation of each of the twenty-seven grievances, but on the other hand, as the list of grievances accumulates, Jefferson’s tone, much like that of a prosecuting attorney delivering his summation to a jury, grows steadily more belligerent, more heated in its sense of outrage at British depredations. Nor is it merely the British actions that elicit contempt; even worse is the British intent. The British government and the British king in particular are portrayed as guilty, not merely of bad policies, but also of proceeding with malevolent motives. The grievances laid out in the Declaration are not merely constitutional; they are also intensel y personal.
In the years leading up to independence, the colonists directed most of their petitions and complaints at the British parliament. They often prefaced those petitions to Parliament with expressions of their pride and loyalty as British subjects and their affection, even reverence, for both the institution of the monarchy and the person of the monarch himself, King George III. But by 1776, the Americans had reached the point where they were denying that Parliament had any authority over them whatsoever. If Parliament had no authority, then why even waste time addressing that body? Consistent with its denial of parliamentary authority, the Declaration studiously avoids any mention of Americans as British subjects. It speaks of the Americans’ fundamental rights as a “people,” and it lays the blame for the people’s travail squarely on King George III—the “He” to whom most of the grievances refer. This decision to direct their ire at the king rather than Parliament signaled the Americans’ intention to affect a fundamental shift in their allegiance, to sever altogether their relationship with their mother country, as represented by the king.
Penguin Guide to the United States Constitution: A Fully Annotated Declaration of Independence Page 1
