The Inspiration of the Constitution

Paper Summary:

This paper shows how the shape of the American government as embodied in the U.S. Constitution was influenced by such factors as the colonial experience, the revolt against British rule, and the failure of the earlier Articles of Confederation. The paper also discusses how the ideas embodied in the Constitution had been taking shape for some time before any of these elements had come into being, changing the way many in the colonies thought about government in the late eighteenth century. It shows how the ideas expressed in the Constitution derived from European theorists such as John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, though the manner in which these ideas were adopted by the colonists was influenced by the various elements of the colonial experience.

From the Paper:

"The Declaration of Independence was adopted in 1776 as a statement of the Second Continental Congress of the independence of the American colonies from British rule. Thomas Jefferson wrote the first draft, and ideas were then incorporated from John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. The document was adopted on July 4 and led to the success of the American Revolution. The document produced at the request of the Second Continental Congress expressed a number of political ideas than current in the colonies, ideas which had been expressed by others in a different form and which were now brought together by Jefferson in a final statement of independence from England."

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