Continental Congress and United States Constitutional Convention · Author
Author
Continental Congress and United States Constitutional Convention
American deliberative bodies that produced the founding documents of the United States
About Continental Congress and United States Constitutional Convention
The Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention were deliberative bodies rather than single authors. The Declaration was drafted chiefly by Thomas Jefferson and revised by a committee and by Congress; the Constitution was shaped in Philadelphia by delegates including James Madison, James Wilson, Gouverneur Morris, and Roger Sherman, under George Washington’s presidency of the Convention. The Bill of Rights was drafted largely by Madison in the First Congress. The resulting texts became the foundational civic documents of the United States.
Frequently Cited
“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”
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America”
Continental Congress and United States Constitutional Convention
1776-1791 · 18th Century · Political Theory
The Founding Documents gathers the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights as one civic anthology. The Declaration, adopted by the Continental Congress in July 1776, announces separation from Britain by appealing to the laws of nature and of nature’s God, to the self-evident truths that all men are created equal and endowed with unalienable rights, and to government deriving its just powers from the consent of the governed.