-
1791 BCE
Bill of Rights
is the collective name for the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. Proposed following the oftentimes bitter 1787–88 battle over ratification of the U.S. Constitution, and crafted to address the objections raised by Anti-Federalists, the Bill of Rights amendments add to the Constitution specific guarantees of personal freedoms and rights, clear limitations on the government's power in judicial and other proceedings. -
1791 BCE
Fifth Amendment
to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights and protects a person from being compelled to be a witness against himself in a criminal case. "Pleading the Fifth" is a colloquial term for invoking the privilege that allows a witness to decline to answer questions where the answers might incriminate him, and generally without having to suffer a penalty for asserting the privilege. A defendant cannot be compelled to become a witness at his own trial. -
1789 BCE
U.S Constitution
is the supreme law of the United States of America.[1] The Constitution, originally comprising seven articles, delineates the national frame of government. Its first three articles entrench the doctrine of the separation of powers, whereby the federal government is divided into three branches: the legislative, consisting of the bicameral Congress; the executive, consisting of the President; and the judicial, consisting of the Supreme Court and other federal courts. -
1782 BCE
eminent domain
is the power of a state or a national government to take private property for public use. However, it can be legislatively delegated by the state to municipalities, government subdivisions, or even to private persons or corporations, when they are authorized to exercise the functions of public character.[1] The property may be taken either for government use or by delegation to third parties, who will devote it to public or civic use or, in some cases, to economic development. -
1782 BCE
e pluribus unum
is a 13-letter phrase on the Seal of the United States, along with Annuit Copts and Novus ordo seclorum , and adopted by an Act of Congress in 1782.Never codified by law, E Pluribus Unum was considered a de facto motto of the United States until 1956 when the United States Congress passed an act , adopting "In God We Trust" as the official motto. -
1782 BCE
in god we trust
It was adopted as the nation's motto in 1956 as an alternative or replacement to the unofficial motto of E pluribus unum, which was adopted when the Great Seal of the United States was created and adopted in 1782. "In God We Trust" first appeared on U.S. coins in 1864 and has appeared on paper currency since 1957. -
1776 BCE
Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence is the statement adopted by the Second Continental Congress meeting at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies,[2] then at war with the Kingdom of Great Britain, regarded themselves as thirteen newly independent sovereign states, and no longer under British rule. Instead they formed a new nation—the United States of America. John Adams was a leader in pushing for independence. -
John Trumbull Sr.
was an American artist during the period of the American Revolutionary War and was notable for his historical paintings. His Declaration of Independence was used on the reverse of the two-dollar billAs a soldier in the American Revolutionary War, Trumbull rendered a particular service at Boston by sketching plans of the British works. He witnessed the Battle of Bunker Hill. -
John Witherspoon
was a Scottish-American Presbyterian minister and a Founding Father of the United States.[1] Witherspoon embraced the concepts of Scottish Common Sense Realism, and while president of the College of New Jersey (1768–94; now Princeton University), became an influential figure in the development of the United States' national character. Politically active, Witherspoon was a delegate from New Jersey to the Second Continental Congress and a signatory to the July 4, 1776, Declaration of Independence. -
liberty
in philosophy, involves free will as contrasted with determinism.[1] In politics, liberty consists of the social and political freedoms to which all community members are entitled.[2] In theology, liberty is freedom from the bondage of sin.[3] Generally, liberty is distinctly differentiated from freedom in that freedom is primarily, if not exclusively, the ability to do as one wills and what one has the power to do. -
John Hancock
was an American merchant, smuggler, statesman, and prominent Patriot of the American Revolution. He served as president of the Second Continental Congress and was the first and third Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He is remembered for his large and stylish signature on the United States Declaration of Independence, so much so that the term "John Hancock" has become, in the United States, a synonym for a signature. -
Charles Carroll
was a wealthy Maryland planter and an early advocate of independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain. He served as a delegate to the Continental Congress and Confederation Congress and later as first United States Senator for Maryland. He was the only Catholic[3] and the longest-lived (and last surviving) signatory of the Declaration of Independence, dying 56 years after the document was first signed. -
John Jay
was an American statesman, Patriot, diplomat, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, signer of the Treaty of Paris, and first Chief Justice of the United Jay served as the President of the Continental Congress an honorific position with little power. -
Benjamin Rush
was a Founding Father of the United States. Rush was a civic leader in Philadelphia, where he was a physician, politician, social reformer, educator and humanitarian, as well as the founder of Dickinson College in Carlisle, PennsylvaniaRush attended the Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence. His later self-description there was: "He aimed right." He served as Surgeon General in the Continental army. -
John Peter Munhlenberg
was an American clergyman, Continental Army soldier during the American Revolutionary War, and political figure in the newly independent United States. A Lutheran minister, he served in the United States House of Representatives and United States Senate from Pennsylvania. -
egalitarism
is a trend of thought that favors equality for all people. Egalitarian doctrines maintain that all humans are equal in fundamental worth or social status, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the term has two distinct definitions in modern English
