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Mar 4, 1215
Magna Carta
Knows also as the Great Charter, written in 1215 at Runnymede. It was written in Latin and is known by it's Latin name. -
Charles I
Asked Parliament for more money in taxes, Parliament refused until he signed the Petition of Rights. -
Thomas Hobbes
English philosopher, he said that without government there would be "continual fear and danger of violent death and life [would be] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." -
Georgia
Was the last to be formed, with the settlement of Savannah in 1733. -
Britain's harsh tax
Harsh tax and trade politics of the 1760's fanned resentment in the colonies. Parliament had passed a number of new laws, among them the Stamp Act of 1765 -
The Social Contract Theory
The most significant of the theories of the origin of the state. Philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, James Harrington(1611-1677), and John Locke(1632-1704) in England and Jean Jacques Rousseau(1712-1778) developed this theory in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries -
Articles of Confederation
Was the first constitution of the USA and legally established the union of the states. The second Continental Congress appointed a committee to draft the Articles in June 1776 and sent the draft to the states for ratification in November 1777 -
The Articles of Confederation
The nation's first constitution, created "afirm league of friendship" among the 13 states -
The Constitution
Still has a major impact today. It was written in 1787. The original states adopted it in order to link them, and the American people, more closely together. The Constitution was built in the belief that in union there is strength. -
Bill of Rights
10 propposals that became the Bill of Rights in 1791 and another that became the 27th Amendment in 1992. -
Abraham Lincoln
Gave immortality to this definition of democracyin his Gettysburg Address. "Government of the people, by the people, for the people." Nowhere is there a better, more concise statement of the American inderstanding of democracy. -
President Andrew Johnson
The 17th President of the USA, following the assasination of President Abraham Lincoln, Johnson presided over the immediate aftermath of the American Civil War. -
Winston Churchill
Once argued for democracy this way "No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
