Comparison Paper
Takareathia Rose
GOVT200, L30374945
America has built its foundation off of a few founding documents, which include The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, and was supported by Thomas Jefferson Letters to the Danbury Baptist in 1802. These documents were intended to set a foundation for the lifestyle that will be enforced throughout the population. However, these documents differ in many ways such as goals, content, and reasoning for creation.
Out of the three documents, the first to be created was The Declaration of Independence (1776). Before 1776, America was controlled and ran by Great Britain, so without separation, the Thirteen colonies could not make any laws without approval. The Thirteen colonies did not agree with the way Britain wanted them to run and also the distance between the two meant that Britain didn’t actually know what was going on. This created unnecessary laws and regulations therefore, they needed to gain independence in order to run properly. The main theme of this document is independence, including The preamble which sets the tone of the rest of the document by stating what they believe about independence and states the unalienable rights. Following the Preamble is the declaration of rights, which simply states the way they feel they should be operating under ideas stated in the Preamble. A Bill of Indictment was included to list the wrong that they believe were done, it gave a list of grievances which help build the case of why they deserve to gain their independence. In conclusion, they state what they want without confusion, which is a complete dependency from Britain and they create a declaration of war if Great Britain was to disagree with this agreement. (America’s founding documents, The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration ,2018) Eleven years after gaining independence they finished creating the Constitution(1787), which was created to be better than the Articles of Confederation, which failed. (Constitution ,History.com,2009) This document answers the who, what, when, and where questions that could be asked when running a country. This document creates a physical agreement that will regulate civilization and minimize other outside hands such as Great Britain having to interfere. The Constitution had to follow the Declaration of Independence because without the DOI they would not be able to create their own way of life. Also, once they gained independence they had to be able to have a physical agreement that would control the regulation of the population and create consequences for the people who don’t follow the agreement. In order to not repeat their past with Great Britain, they ensured to include checks and balances, limits and powers of each branch of government. Following the Constitution by fifteen years came the Thomas Jefferson Letters to the Danbury Baptist(1802). The reason these letters came so far behind the first two documents is that first independence...
