The United States of America

The Beginning In 1607 Great Britain set up the first colony in North America and named it Jamestown. Many people who came to the New World over the next several hundred years were seeking political, economic, and religious freedom. As more people arrived in North America more colonies were set up. The King of England controlled this land and the people still had to obey the King’s laws. Overtime the population grew to include 13 colonies.

Grievances against the King In the 1700’s many of the colonists began to become frustrated that King George the III was making laws and taxes that they didn’t get to vote on. At the time King George was at war in Europe and he needed more money so he began to make taxes such as the Tea Act, Sugar Act and Stamp Act. The colonists did not get to vote on this because there was no one in England that was representing what they wanted. This was known as taxation without representation. The colonists reacted by writing a document for the king. In this document they addressed all of their grievances against the king. This document is known as the Declaration of Independence.

Declaration of Independence The Declaration was written in 1776 by Thomas Jefferson who is known as one of the founding fathers of our country. In the document he used the ideas of man named John Locke who believed that all people have ‘natural rights’ or what Thomas Jefferson wrote were ‘unalienable rights’. The Declaration was signed by the founding fathers. 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…. The sentence above is an excerpt from the Declaration.

American Revolution The Declaration was the colonists way of saying that they wanted a separate nation from the King. They wanted to create a fair and just government where no one person had all authority or power. The Declaration led to the American Revolution which the colonists won with the help of France and became the United States of America independent from Great Britain in September 1783.

New Government The founding fathers had to create a new government for this new nation. In the summer of 1787 they wrote the Constitution of the United States of America. The Constitution explained the 3 separate but equal branches of government- Executive (enforces the laws), Judicial (rules on the laws), Legislative (makes the laws). However, there were some delegates that refused to support the Constitution because there weren’t any rights directly listed for the people. They were called Anti-Federalists.

Bill of Rights In order to make the Anti-Federalists happy the first 10 amendments were added to the Constitution in 1791. They are known as the Bill of Rights. Each of the rights listed are guaranteed to every US citizen.