Documents of Freedom

In this introductory unit, students will be given an overview of the entire course as well as an introduction to Founding principles and virtues necessary for a successful constitutional republic.

America's Founders looked to the lessons of human nature and history to determine how best to structure a government that would promote liberty. They started with the principle of consent of the governed: the only legitimate government is one which the people themselves have authorized. But the Founders also guarded against the tendency of those in power to abuse their authority, and structured a government whose power is limited and divided in complex ways to prevent a concentration of power. They counted on citizens to live out virtues like justice, honesty, respect, humility, and responsibility.

The structural or institutional features of the American constitutional order only make sense in the context of what the Founders hoped to achieve--securing the right of the American people to live decent, worthwhile lives according to their own goals and faculties. The thoughtful preservation of those institutions, occasionally through necessary corrective measures, depends on a proper understanding of what it is that they are designed to promote as well as an appreciation of how to manage those institutions to serve the best interests of the American people. All of this requires a citizenry with the skills and dispositions necessary for republican self-government, that is, a citizen body whose members understand and act to promote justice.

Rights claims have always been central to American political discourse. In the Founders' view, no human being is so decisively superior to other adult human beings that he is entitled to direct their actions without their express consent. By Nature all adult human beings, regardless of their race, sex or class, are free to rule themselves or, what is the same, to exercise the same "inalienable rights," including the right to life, physical liberty, acquire and use property, marry and raise children, communicate one's opinions, and worship God according to the dictates of one's conscience.

In this unit, students will learn about the struggles for liberty and equality throughout American history.

During the War of Independence, British North Americans expanded the principles of federalism and separation of powers by being among the first Europeans to codify their practices in written constitutions. Several colonial charters and their subsequent revisions established a practice of protecting the interests of towns, villages, and communities by securing their economic interests as well as their participation in colonial governments.

The evidence seems overwhelming that free enterprise and widespread economic prosperity are more than just connected; the first leads directly to the second, not just in America but around the world.

Our commercial republic is rooted in the ideas of John Locke and Adam Smith.

This unit discusses America's impact on the world and how foreign relations affect the United States and other countries around the world.

The United States Founders believed that certain civic virtues were required of citizens in order for the Constitution to work. Numerous primary sources—notably the Federalist Papers and the Autobiography of Ben Franklin—point us to the “Founders’ Virtues.” Before exploring the Documents of Freedom, it is important to understand civic virtue as an essential element of self-government.

Primary sources are a main focus throughout Documents of Freedom. Here we offer many of the most important primary sources from American history that include annotations to help you understand the purposes of each document.

The Declaration of Independence was drafted by Thomas Jefferson in June of 1776. The Declaration announced to the world that the thirteen American colonies regarded themselves independent sovereign states. It articulates the fundamental ideas that form the American Nation: All people are created free and equal and possess the same inherent, unalienable rights. This lesson plan includes six activities. The activities can be taught in sequence as a comprehensive overview of the Declaration of Independence or individual activities can be taught as stand-alone lessons.

What were the Founders’ concepts of justice, liberty, and rights and where did those concepts came from? How have these ideas changed over time? Use these primary sources to analyze.

In 1787, many Americans were concerned that the Articles of Confederation did not grant enough power to the central government to protect the rights of the people. Under the Articles, the national government was unable to regulate commerce, taxation, currency, treaties, and protect the rights of individuals and states. The states called a delegation to meet in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 and from that convention the new Constitution was born.

All humans are born with equal inherent rights, but many governments do not protect people's freedom to exercise those rights. The way to secure inalienable rights, the Founders believed, was to consent to giving up a small amount of our freedom so that government has the authority to protect our rights. Freedom depends on citizens having the wisdom, courage, and sense of justice necessary to take action in choosing virtuous leaders, and in holding those leaders to their commitments.

The Founders believed that the government’s authority needed to come from the people. Under the reign of King George III, the colonists believed that they were deprived of their opportunity to consent to be governed by Parliament through representatives, and, therefore, the British could not force their laws upon the colonies. The Founders made sure to uphold this right in the American Constitution. The people, through their representatives at state ratification conventions, had to ratify the document in order for it to become law.

The benefits of freedom are safest when officials cannot make arbitrary and unpredictable laws. The rule of law means that laws are stable, limited in scope, and applied to every citizen, including those who make them. Laws must be created in the open, according to clear rules, and must reflect the consent of the governed. Ultimately, the rule of law depends on people with the courage, self-reliance, and wisdom to make prudent decisions, and who have enough tolerance for others to let them live as they see fit.

The Framers of the U.S. Constitution knew that the new government they crafted must be more powerful and effective than the government under the Articles of Confederation. They studied history and human nature to create a government strong enough to promote the public good, but not so strong that it would become a threat to individual liberties.

The Founders understood the principle expressed by the British historian, Lord Acton, “All power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Through the complex system of checks and balances developed in the U.S. Constitution, they sought to assure that no person or branch of government could exercise unrestrained power. As James Madison advocated in Federalist No. 51, ambition should counteract ambition in a fashion that advances the public good.

While many people today use the terms “republic” and “democracy” interchangeably, America’s Founders saw important differences between the two forms of government. Distrustful of democracies, they were skeptical about the protection of individual rights in a system that functioned simply by majority rule. The Framers of the United States Constitution instead crafted a constitutional republic based on majority rule but included structures to curb its excesses and protect essential liberty interests.

The principle of due process of law means that the government must follow duly-enacted laws when it seeks to restrict or deny fundamental rights, including a person’s rights to life, liberty, or property. In essence, it means that the government must treat its citizens fairly, following laws and established procedures in everything it does. It is the commitment to this principle that makes the United States, as John Adams once noted, “a government of laws, and not of men.”

The Framers thought the best way to protect the rights of citizens would be through a government powerful enough to fulfill its constitutional obligations yet limited enough to prevent it from encroaching on the rights of individuals. A large national republic that divided power horizontally (within governments) and vertically (among different levels of government—local, state, and national) seemed the best way to achieve their goals.

What is the balance of civil liberties and security during a time of crisis? Students read and discuss President Lincoln’s proclamation suspending habeas corpus. Working in cooperative groups students hold a simulated trial in the case of Ex parte Milligan (1866). Following the simulation students debrief the case and compare their verdict with the actual verdict. Students reflect on President Lincoln’s attempt to balance the strength of the government with protection of individual civil liberties.

From the Founding generation to the present day, controversy continues regarding the proper division of power between state and national government. What the Founders did not find debatable was the wisdom of dividing power both among and within governments. In short, they considered the federal system to be a critical part of the American constitutional order.

Though not always in the media spotlight, the communities with which a person interacts on a daily basis are important political units. It is citizens’ interaction with their communities that largely determines their happiness and safety.

What influence did Plato have on James Madison and the writers of the Constitution? Compare and contrast excerpts from The Republic of Plato and selected Federalist Papers by James Madison to determine in what ways Madison agreed and disagreed with Plato, regarding human nature the proper role of government in a society. In what ways did they agree? In what ways did they disagree?

When European colonists came to North America, they faced the challenge of establishing societies that reflected their identity and mission for God. Experiments with economic and civil liberty followed in the name of the common good. Colonists and, later, the Founding generation became convinced that legally requiring individuals to commit their labor or their money towards a communal farm or church, with no regard for individual contribution or conscience, violated principles of justice. The link between economic liberty and the liberty of conscience became clear to many, and is responsible for liberating “a field without an horizon ... to the exploring and ardent curiosity of man.”

The Declaration of Independence, based in part on the philosophy of John Locke, was an “expression of the American mind”. Going back to Magna Carta, British nobles had petitioned the monarch demanding limits to his power. But Locke argues and the Declaration of Independence asserts that legitimate government is based on the consent of the governed. Locke’s ideas were too democratic, too revolutionary for his time in England, but a century later they had a firm hold in the American colonies, and in 1776 they were the basis of the original and most fundamental American statement of rights, the Declaration of Independence.

In 1777, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation, the first government of the independent United States. The Articles created a “confederacy,” an association of sovereign states. Every state was its own country, except with respect to those powers expressly delegated to the U.S. Congress, and it agreed to do certain things for and with the other states in the confederacy. But by the mid-1780s, more and more people were becoming concerned about problems with the Articles.

During the “critical period” after the American Revolution, many were concerned that the Articles of Confederation were inadequate for the states to grow commercially and economically. The Confederation Congress announced a meeting to revise the Articles of Confederation, but not everyone was convinced that the Articles needed revision—or even that the goals of the Convention were admirable. Divisions emerged among the delegates regarding centralized power, executive power, representation, and slavery. This lesson plan includes six activities. The activities may be taught in sequence as a comprehensive overview of the Constitutional Convention or individual activities may be taught as stand-alone lessons.

After the Constitution was completed and signed by 39 delegates on September 17, 1787, many of the debates from Independence Hall continued in the debates over ratification in the states. For the Constitution to go into effect, at least nine states would have to ratify (or agree to adopt) it. A party division arose: Federalists argued in favor of ratification, Anti-Federalists against. Leading Federalists James Madison and Alexander Hamilton made a case for ratification in the Federalist Papers. Leading Anti-Federalists were Patrick Henry and George Mason. Mason had attended the Convention but refused to sign the final document, arguing that the central government created by the Constitution would be a threat to liberty and would take away power from the individual states.

The Founders established a republic as the first nation in world history to be based upon principles of liberty, justice, and equality. The nation’s diversity has put our stated ideals and principles to the test repeatedly as one group after another works to align law and culture with our high principles. In this lesson students will use primary sources to examine questions of racial equality and religious diversity.

Native Americans have experienced discrimination at the hands of European settlers during the colonial era and the white majority in the United States for over four hundred years. In that time, there have been a wide variety of policies towards Native Americans, some with good intentions and some bad, but none seemed to resolve the clash of cultures and the difficulties faced by Native Americans. They have rarely enjoyed liberty and equality in the American system of self-government.

Today there are few more controversial topics in the study of American history and government than the issue of slavery and the Constitution. On the surface, the Constitution seemed to protect slavery in the states, prohibited Congress from banning the slave trade for twenty years, and required that fugitive slaves, even in the North, be returned to their masters. Because of these apparent constitutional protections, a bloody Civil War was fought to free the slaves and win ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to end slavery in the U.S. forever. The Constitution, therefore, in the eyes of some scholars, seems to be a contradiction to the universal ideals of liberty and equality in the American Founding and the Declaration of Independence which proclaimed “all men are created equal” and endowed with “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Explore the impact the Civil War amendments had on African-Americans during Reconstruction and beyond.

The Civil Rights Movement sought to win the American promise of liberty and equality during the twentieth-century. From the early struggles of the 1940s to the crowning successes of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts that changed the legal status of African-Americans in the United States, the Civil Rights Movement firmly grounded its appeals for liberty and equality in the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. Rather than rejecting an America that discriminated against a particular race, the movement fought for America to fulfill its own universal promise that “all men are created equal.” The Civil Rights Movement worked for American principles within American institutions rather than against them.

The emergence of a true women’s movement for equality and suffrage (the right to vote) developed after the religious revivals of the Second Great Awakening and the rise of several antebellum (before the Civil War) reform movements in the 1830s and 1840s. This lesson explores the birth of the Women’s Rights movement, as well as its goals and the historical context of the movement.

After World War II, women’s struggle for equality achieved a mixed record of success. The women’s rights movement won equal opportunities in higher education and employment relatively quickly in the 1940s and 1950s. The modern concept of women’s equality as “feminism” appeared in the 1960s, led by activists such as Betty Friedan. Some of its victories in the legislative arena were completely inadvertent, while one of its grandest objects and subject of its greatest efforts resulted in defeat. Moreover, the movement was dominated by an intellectual and professional leadership at some distance from ordinary women. Despite the vagaries of the movement, it was remarkably successful in fundamentally changing society and women’s roles as well as attitudes towards women. In this lesson, students will explore the record of successes, and better understand constitutional principles of privacy and due process.

America has always been and continues to be a diverse country. One question that will confront all Americans is how to ensure that every citizen, regardless of skin color, sex, or religion, will enjoy the liberty and equality that the country was founded upon. Another question is whether Americans will continue to agree upon the fundamental principles upon which the country was founded and the meaning of those principles or whether we will be fragmented into groups with a narrow perspective and only look out for our own interests. The perennial challenge of liberty and equality are how to unite the goals of freedom and the common good.

Provide students with a comprehensive study of federalism. Through the Constitution’s system of federalism, power is divided between national and subnational governments. Federalism allows citizens to make policy decisions at state and local levels. Decentralization draws individuals out of private life and compels civic engagement.

Elections have consequences. They decide who holds power and therefore the laws that we live under. But they also reflect principles of federalism and consent of the governed, as well as the complexity of the American system.

From the Founding to the present, Americans have always expressed a distrust of political parties. Hardly a day passes without someone’s—the president, a Senator, a Representative—attacking politics in Washington for the spirit of partisanship.

America holds more elections than any other democracy. The reason is federalism. Because of decentralization there are more offices for the electorate to fill and thus more elections.

Debating matters of public concern is essential in a free, self-governing society. If citizens were not free to decide after listening to opposing views self-government would be distorted. At the core of the Declaration of Independence is the principle that government exists to protect individual rights for us, not that we exist to serve the government. Therefore the people are the master and the government is the servant. If the government can dictate what we can and cannot discuss, then it would imply that the servant can tell the master what to do.

Americans celebrate volunteers and public servants, intuitively recognizing that there is something of great value in helping your community. But often we have arrived at distorted understandings of voluntarism and public service: definitions that emphasize trivial engagement and exclude important forms of public service. Exploring the benefits of service, the rules and norms that support and promote it, and the virtues that volunteers display will provide us will a more accurate understanding of what it means to serve.

When we hear the term “economics,” we tend to think about ups and downs in the economy as well as graphs mysteriously depicting supply and demand. In reality, economics is vitally important subject because it is the study of making choices. More specifically, it is the study and practice of making choices in a world of limited resources (scarcity). You cannot go for a day without making economic decisions. For this reason, an understanding of economic thought makes you a more successful citizen.

Prices are created through interactions between sellers and buyers. Supply (sellers) and demand (buyers) is the first, most recognized model in economics. Demand represents the various numbers of items that consumers are willing and able to purchase at a series of different prices at a particular point in time.

As buyers purchase goods and services, they signal to the producers what ought to be made. If people want to wear pants with farm animal designs, they buy them. Producers have to be observant to anticipate demand. As they see that the stock of cow pants is flying off the shelves, they will create many more of them. Buyers and sellers are able to communicate effectively using just money.

The overall wealth of the United States has been achieved because of the free enterprise system. The U.S. has a limited government, and that feature extends to economic choices; most decisions about what, how, and for whom to produce are left to market forces rather than government dictates.

What strengths does the free market economy have and how does it affects development and production of goods?

In America’s free society, entrepreneurs of many kinds start businesses that create the nation's wealth. The Founders established the federal government in the Constitution, and the American people ratified it to protect the rights and property of its citizens. That meant that national defense, court systems, and political administration all became part of the U.S. government. Therefore, some taxes were necessary to support the limited functions of this new government.

If, as individuals, we spend more than we earn, we can go bankrupt. The same is true with nations. If a nation spends on government services more than it takes in from tax revenue, it runs a deficit, and must borrow at interest to get back to even.

Philanthropy may be defined as the desire to promote the welfare of society by giving your own money to good causes. Philanthropy is not allocating the money of others, whether through taxes or government programs, to the less fortunate in society. Philanthropy is an action of one individual or one family giving to help others.

The American Founders set out to establish a modern, liberal, commercial republic. Their political theory derived primarily from Enlightenment theories of social contract and natural rights, which stressed the value of economic progress. But their idea of a commercial republic did not abandon ancient concepts of republicanism, which emphasized the need for virtuous self-sacrifice for the common or public good. They believed that a free economy would promote the moral character needed for republican self-government, and that if people were going to govern themselves politically, they had to govern themselves in their families, churches, local communities and economic markets.

After the Constitution was ratified, a new government was elected and took office in 1789. The administration of President George Washington adopted many economic policies that helped to develop the new nation. Alexander Hamilton, Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury, proposed a program of federal economic promotion.

Between the War of 1812 and the Civil War, the federal government largely retreated from a program of national economic development, while the states stepped into the role of economic promotion, particularly in the banking and internal improvement fields.

When eleven slave states seceded in 1860-61, they left the federal government in the hands of the new Republican Party. The Republicans were dedicated above all to ending slavery and preserving the Union, but many of them also advocated a revival of the Federalist and Whig system of national mercantilism, which sought to have the federal government shape economic development.

The twentieth century saw the rise of a widespread but not very clearly defined group of reformers known as the progressives. The basic belief that united them was that the industrialized, urbanized United States of the nineteenth century had outgrown its eighteenth-century Constitution.

The election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 resulted in the New Deal he proposed, a fundamental shift in the American political economy and a new conception of the relationship between the government and the governed.

What is the historic role of civic and economic liberties? Examine the Supreme Court Case, Citizens United v. FEC (2010) and compare and contrast the opinions of Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan.

In 1787 the Constitution granted significant new powers to the central government, including those traditionally held by sovereign nations. In response to Anti-Federalist concerns about a too-powerful central government, James Madison explained that the new system of government was designed to work with human nature.

The U.S. Constitution divides war powers between the president and Congress. The delegates to the Constitutional Convention were focused on creating a government powerful enough to protect liberty, but not so powerful that it would threaten liberty. They worked carefully to craft the war powers of the new government, knowing that history was full of examples of war, so that war powers were necessary, but also of rulers who had abused the power and endangered liberty in order to make war.

The Constitution gives the power of declaring war solely to Congress, while the president serves as commander in chief of the U.S. military. What does commander in chief mean? As American citizens, it is our responsibility not only to stay informed about the domestic and international uses of our military, but also to make thoughtful judgments about the wisdom and prudence of each use.

For all of human history, people have desired things that people in distant lands possessed in abundance. From Australian opals to Chinese silk, Greek olive oil to French wine, Peruvian textiles to Florida oranges, from South African diamonds to Cuban tobacco, we have always wanted access to the best things different places around the world have to offer.

As World War II raged, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt met with Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill at the Tehran Conference in 1943. At this war strategy meeting, Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill decided—among many other things—that a new body should be formed to replace the League of Nations and that the United States would be a part of the new body. In 1945, representatives from fifty nations met in San Francisco to write a charter for the new organization, the United Nations (UN).

There is no way the Constitution will work if the people lose their virtue. Almost every Founding Father said or wrote something along these lines. A self-governing polity can only succeed when it is composed of individuals who can govern themselves. And if the people do not control themselves, they will either descend into self-destructive anarchy or come together in support of a dictator or despot emerging to embody their collective greed and lust for power. They would vote to give him more and more power, even as they congratulated themselves on their wisdom.