The Declaration of Independence, Lesson 9: The Declaration and the Constitution

Two Documents, Two Jobs

The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were written eleven years apart for different purposes. The Declaration, approved on July 4, 1776, explains why thirteen colonies were leaving the British Empire. The Constitution, signed on September 17, 1787, and set to take effect on ratification by nine states, sets up a government and says what it may do.¹ The Constitution's own attestation connects the two by dating itself "in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independance of the United States of America the Twelfth."¹ The date count runs from the Declaration.

The law treats them differently. The Constitution says that it, along with the laws made under it and treaties, "shall be the supreme Law of the Land," and the judges in every state are bound by it.¹ The Declaration has no such clause. The United States Code prints it on the first pages of the Organic Laws of the United States, followed by the Articles of Confederation, the Northwest Ordinance and the Constitution, but outside the "general and permanent laws." Chief Justice John Roberts's 2025 Year-End Report cites 44 Stat. 1 and 44 Stat. 778 (1926) for that placement.²³

President Calvin Coolidge, speaking at the sesquicentennial in 1926, put the two together in a sentence the Chief Justice's report repeats: "every American can turn for solace and consolation to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States with the assurance and confidence that those two great charters of freedom and justice remain firm and unshaken."² Speakers often use the pairing. The legal and historical questions start where the pairing stops.

That difference is the starting point for the arguments in this lesson. Some readers treat the Declaration as the framework that explains the Constitution. Others treat it as a historical statement of aspirations with no legal weight of its own. Both groups cite the same history, and the sections below set out what the texts say before turning to the debate.

What the Declaration Claims

The second paragraph of the Declaration is a short chain of claims. "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." Governments are instituted "to secure these rights," "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." And "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."⁴ The Declaration then spends most of its length on a list of grievances meant to show that the king had become that kind of government.

Three ideas carry the weight: that people hold certain rights prior to government, that government's authority comes from their consent, and that they may change a government that fails to protect their rights. The text does not name a source for any of them, and this lesson attributes them only to writers whose words can be read. Jefferson, writing in 1825, said the Declaration's aim was "to place before mankind the common sense of the subject" and listed "Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney" among the writers whose works had shaped the common stock of ideas.⁵ That is a recollection written 49 years later.

Other texts of the period say related things. William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, opens its discussion of individual rights with natural liberty, "a right inherent in us by birth," and names three absolute rights: personal security, personal liberty and private property. Of life he writes that it is "the immediate gift of God, a right inherent by nature in every individual."⁶ George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights, adopted weeks before, says all men "are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights," and that all power "is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people."⁷ The Princeton Papers of Thomas Jefferson report that scholars including Pauline Maier and Danielle Allen "have demonstrated the connections" between the Declaration's second paragraph and article 1 of the Virginia text.⁸

The document also left open what "created equal" required in practice. The Declaration says nothing about the laws of any state, and slavery existed throughout the colonies. The Chief Justice's 2025 report puts it plainly: the Declaration "obviously captured an ideal rather than a reality," and "the vast majority of the 56 signers" enslaved other people at some point in their lives.²

What the Constitution Says and Leaves Out

The Constitution begins "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."¹ It does not say "all men are created equal." A search of the National Archives transcription found no appearance of the words "slave," "Creator," "unalienable" or "God," and the word "equal" appears only in contexts such as the Senate's "equal Suffrage" and the equal division of a tied vote.¹

The Constitution does reflect the Declaration's idea of consent in how it came into force. Article VII provides that "the Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same."¹ Ratification went through state conventions. The ratification procedure is covered in the course on the Articles of Confederation.

The Preamble lists six purposes: a more perfect Union, justice, domestic tranquility, the common defense, the general welfare and "the Blessings of Liberty." The Declaration's second paragraph names three of the same concerns in different words, namely securing rights, the consent of the governed and the "Safety and Happiness" of the people, and the Declaration ends by pledging "our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."¹⁴ The Preamble is the Constitution's closest approach to the Declaration's language of purpose. It is a statement of purpose and not itself a source of power.

Two other provisions bear on the relationship. Article VI says an oath to support the Constitution is required of officials, "but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States," a different approach from the state constitutions of 1776, several of which tied office to religious belief.¹ And the Constitution, as the next section shows, accommodated slavery in three places without using the word.

Madison on "Nature's God"

The ratification debates show how the framers' generation connected the two documents. In Federalist No. 43, Madison faced an objection: the Articles of Confederation required unanimity, and the Constitution would take effect when nine states ratified. How could nine states supersede a compact that thirteen had made? Madison's answer began with an appeal to "the absolute necessity of the case; to the great principle of self-preservation; to the transcendent law of nature and of nature's God, which declares that the safety and happiness of society are the objects at which all political institutions aim, and to which all such institutions must be sacrificed."⁹ The phrase "Nature's God" appears in the Declaration's first sentence, and Madison used it to defend a procedure written into Article VII.⁴ He then offered a second answer based on the compact's own principles.

Madison also defined a republic in Federalist No. 39 as "a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people."¹⁰ Hamilton opened Federalist No. 1 by observing that it seemed reserved to the people of this country to decide whether societies of men are capable of establishing "good government from reflection and choice," or are "forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force."¹¹

James Wilson, addressing the Pennsylvania ratifying convention on December 4, 1787, said the Declaration's key passage was "the broad basis on which our independence was placed," and that "on the same certain and solid foundation this system [the Constitution] is erected." The Chief Justice's 2025 report quotes this and adds that the two documents are connected most clearly in the judicial branch: the Declaration charged that the king "has made Judges dependent on his Will alone," and Article III answered with life tenure and salary protection.²

Slavery in the Constitution

The Constitution avoids the word "slave" and still protects slavery in three places. Article I, section 2 counts "the whole Number of free Persons" plus "three fifths of all other Persons" for apportioning representatives and direct taxes. Article I, section 9 says "The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight." Article IV, section 2 says no "Person held to Service or Labour in one State" who escapes to another "shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due."¹

The Chief Justice's report calls this "perhaps the most obvious disconnect between the documents": the Constitution "avoided any direct mention of slavery, yet its text reflected several compromises that accommodated its perpetuation until the Civil War."² South Carolina's secession declaration of December 1860 pointed to the same three clauses as evidence that the Constitution recognized the right of property in slaves.¹² Abolitionists drew the opposite conclusion from the same text, as the next section shows.

Dred Scott: Both Documents in One Opinion

The Supreme Court's decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) shows how the two documents can be pulled apart. Chief Justice Taney quoted the Declaration's second paragraph in full and conceded that its "general words ... would seem to embrace the whole human family, and if they were used in a similar instrument at this day would be so understood." He then argued that "it is too clear for dispute, that the enslaved African race were not intended to be included," because if the language had covered them, the conduct of the men who framed the Declaration "would have been utterly and flagrantly inconsistent with the principles they asserted."¹³ He relied on the fact that, as he wrote, enslaved people were held "in every one of the thirteen colonies which united in the Declaration of Independence, and afterwards formed the Constitution."¹³

Justice Curtis, dissenting, answered on the facts of citizenship. He wrote that when the Articles of Confederation were ratified, free native-born inhabitants of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and North Carolina, "though descended from African slaves, were not only citizens of those States, but such of them as had the other necessary qualifications possessed the franchise of electors, on equal terms with other citizens." Justice McLean also dissented.¹³ For this lesson, the point is that Taney and Lincoln, who answered him in 1857, both quoted the same words and read them differently, and Curtis's dissent used the founding-era record to dispute Taney's reading.¹⁴

Consent Then and Now

The Declaration says governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed," and the Constitution gave that idea a procedure. Article VII routed approval through state conventions, and Federalist No. 39 described the resulting government as one that "derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people."¹¹⁰ The same essay noted that the ratification was to be "the act of the people, as forming so many independent States, not as forming one aggregate nation," a point that bears on the compact arguments described above.¹⁰

The Declaration's last clause in its second paragraph, the right "to alter or to abolish," also has a counterpart. Article V of the Constitution provides a method for amendment, and the Idaho Constitution's section 2 repeats the right of the people to "alter, reform or abolish" their government.¹¹⁵ The lesson on amending the Constitution covers Article V. What the Declaration describes as a right of last resort, the Constitution turns into an ordinary procedure with supermajority rules.

What Neither Document Says

Neither document does the other's work. The Declaration sets out no branches of government, no powers, no voting rules and no courts. Its only institutional complaint is about a king who had obstructed the colonial legislatures and made judges "dependent on his Will alone."⁴² The Constitution says nothing about the Creator, nothing about natural rights by name and nothing about equality as a general principle until the Fourteenth Amendment.¹¹⁶

The gap is why the pairing is useful and why it can mislead. A speaker who quotes the Declaration for a right is stating a moral or political claim, and a speaker who quotes the Constitution is pointing to a rule a court can apply. A careful reporter or official keeps the two apart, and then asks which statute, constitutional clause or court decision turns the claim into a rule.

State constitutions often restate the Declaration's claims as rules. Idaho's article I, section 1 lists "enjoying and defending life and liberty; acquiring, possessing and protecting property; pursuing happiness and securing safety." The wording resembles the Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776, which names "the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety."¹⁵⁷ This lesson does not claim a direct line from one text to the other. The resemblance shows how a family of phrases passed through the state declarations of rights, a history covered in the lesson on declarations of rights.

Covenant With Hell or Glorious Liberty Document

The anti-slavery movement split over what to do with the Constitution. William Lloyd Garrison called it a "covenant with Hell," according to the editors of a standard textbook who excerpt Frederick Douglass's 1860 Glasgow speech. Douglass shared that view at first. In 1851 he announced a "change of opinion" and concluded that slavery was "a system of lawless violence; that it never was lawful, and never can be made so."¹⁷

His 1852 Rochester speech put the new position in one sentence: "interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a glorious liberty document."¹⁸ In Glasgow in 1860, he laid out his method. The question, he said, was "Does the United States Constitution guarantee to any class or description of people in that country the right to enslave?" He argued that the intentions of the framers are to be respected "so far, and so far only, as we find those intentions plainly stated in the Constitution," and that "it was what they said that was adopted by the people, not what they were ashamed or afraid to say."¹⁷ The textbook editors ask whether this rule of reading the text consistently with fundamental principles is sound, and whether a person relying on it could defend any desirable policy. Courts and scholars still argue the point, and this lesson takes no side in it.

Lincoln, in his 1857 reply to Taney and Douglas, took yet another path: the Declaration stated a standard to be approached, and the Constitution and laws were to be brought closer to it over time.¹⁴

The Ninth and Tenth Amendments

The Bill of Rights gave the Declaration's ideas a place in the Constitution's text without naming them. The Ninth Amendment says "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." The Tenth says "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."¹⁹ Both refer to something outside the text, either rights "retained by the people" or powers "reserved ... to the people."

What the Ninth Amendment means is disputed. One reading treats it as a reminder that the list of rights is not exhaustive. Another treats it as a rule for reading federal power. This lesson does not resolve the question. The history of how the amendments came about is in the lesson on declarations of rights, where Madison's June 8, 1789 speech and the state proposals of 1788 appear.

The Reconstruction Amendments and the Declaration

The amendments of the 1860s and 1870s are where the Declaration's language entered the Constitution. Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment says "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside," and that no State shall "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."¹⁶ "Life, liberty" echoes the Declaration's list and Virginia's article 1. The Constitution's text now guarantees "equal protection" against the states.

The Chief Justice's report traces the sequence. It says Lincoln lived to see the Thirteenth Amendment pass Congress but not to see it ratified, and it quotes Mill's remark that the amendment ended the "reproach" the opening words of the Declaration had been to the nation that adopted it. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth followed, and the report credits suffragists and civil-rights leaders with appealing to the Declaration in support of the Nineteenth Amendment, Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.² Lincoln's Gettysburg Address had already framed the argument: the nation was "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."²⁰

The next lesson in this series, on the Declaration after 1776, follows the use of the document by Lincoln, Douglass, the Seneca Falls signers and King. See The Declaration After 1776.

The Apple of Gold and the Picture of Silver

Lincoln's best-known image of the relationship comes from an undated fragment, traditionally assigned to January 1861. He described the Union's principle of liberty, from the Declaration, as an "apple of gold" and the Constitution as a "picture of silver" made to frame it. "The picture was made for the apple," he wrote, and the apple was not made "for the picture."²¹ On this reading the Constitution's purpose is to secure what the Declaration declares, and its provisions should be read to serve that end.

The Chief Justice's 2025 report accepts part of that view and rejects part. It says the Declaration "did inform" the Constitution, and quotes Wilson in 1787 and Lincoln in 1863 on the connection. It also says the Declaration "was then, and remains today, a statement of national aspirations, not a codification of enforceable legal obligations," quotes Justice Scalia calling the document "aspirations" and "philosophizing," and says that for "a practical and pragmatic charter of government" Americans must turn to the Constitution.²

The two statements can be held together. The Declaration may supply the ends and the Constitution the means, and still not be a source of rights that a court can enforce by itself. Other readers draw a sharper line between them. A reader should keep these positions apart and attribute each to the person who holds it.

Competing Readings

The debate over how the two documents fit can be sorted into four positions, each held by identifiable people, and none tied to a political label.

• The Declaration as the key to the Constitution. Lincoln's fragment and his Springfield speech treat the Declaration as the standard the Constitution serves. Wilson's 1787 remark that the Constitution stands "on the same certain and solid foundation" is an earlier version of the same idea.²¹¹⁴²
• The Declaration as aspiration only. The Chief Justice's report and Justice Scalia, as the report quotes him, treat the Declaration as a statement of ideals that does not itself create legal rights. The Declaration's placement in the Organic Laws and not in the general and permanent laws is the report's evidence.²
• The Constitution's text and its compromises. Garrison read the compromises over slavery as the heart of the document. Douglass, after 1851, argued that the text properly read supported liberty and that only the words, not the framers' private motives, had been adopted by the people.¹⁷
• The Declaration as a charter of state sovereignty and compact. South Carolina's 1860 declaration read the Declaration's "two great principles" as the right of a state to govern itself and the right of a people to abolish a destructive government, and added the "law of compact." Stephens in 1861 called the founders' assumption of the equality of the races "an error," without naming the Declaration.¹²²²

Within the first position, justices have cited the Declaration in individual opinions. Justice Thomas, concurring in Adarand Constructors v. Pena (1995), wrote that a race-based program was "at war with the principle of inherent equality that underlies and infuses our Constitution," and cited the Declaration.²³ In dissent in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), he wrote that the majority "rejects the idea, captured in our Declaration of Independence, that human dignity is innate."²⁴ Those are individual writings on different questions, and they show only that the Declaration is a text justices quote, not that a court has ever held it enforceable.

What Historians Have Added

Historians have looked at the Declaration's making and meaning. The Princeton Papers of Thomas Jefferson name Pauline Maier's American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (1997) and Danielle Allen's Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality (2014) as works that connect the Declaration's second paragraph to Virginia's declaration of rights.⁸ David Armitage's The Declaration of Independence: A Global History (2007) follows the document abroad and counts more than a hundred later declarations of independence.²⁵ This lesson read only the Princeton page and the publisher's page for those books, and not the books themselves. Other scholarly works on the Declaration exist, and a reader who wants to go further should read the books directly.

Key Documents

The table sets the main texts side by side. Dates and wording come from the sources in the footnotes.

Idaho: The Declaration in State Law

The Idaho Constitution carries the Declaration's language into article I, section 1: "All men are by nature free and equal, and have certain inalienable rights, among which are enjoying and defending life and liberty; acquiring, possessing and protecting property; pursuing happiness and securing safety." Section 2 says political power is inherent in the people and that they have the right "to alter, reform or abolish" their government. Section 3 declares that the state of Idaho is "an inseparable part of the American Union" and that the Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land.¹⁵ Those sections combine ideas this lesson traces to different documents: the Declaration's equality and rights, the right to change a government, and the Constitution's supremacy clause.

Idaho Code section 33-1602 deals with teaching the founding in public schools. It lists as principles "The self-evident truth that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with inalienable rights," and the consent of the governed. Its list of key documents includes the Declaration of Independence, the Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776, the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, the Northwest Ordinance, the Federalist papers and the Idaho Constitution. One subsection calls slavery antithetical to the Declaration's principles.²⁶ The statute was amended in 2025 and 2026, and the numbering may change again, so a reader citing it should read the current text on the Legislature's site. This lesson reports the statute's words and takes no position on how the documents should be taught.²⁶

Using this in reporting and civic life

The reporter writing about "constitutional rights" claims

Reporter Mina Calloway is covering a speaker who says the Declaration "guarantees" a right to a certain benefit. She checks. The Declaration says people are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights," and it names life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is not part of the Constitution and the Chief Justice's 2025 report calls it a statement of aspirations. She writes that the speaker is quoting the Declaration, and she asks the speaker which constitutional or statutory provision creates the right.⁴²

The teacher building a comparison

Teacher Raymond Tuttle has students make a two-column chart of what each document says about consent, equality, slavery and religion. They use the National Archives transcriptions of both. For the religion row, they find that the Declaration refers to a "Creator" and "Nature's God," and that the Constitution has no such language and bars a religious test for federal office.⁴¹

The council member and a ceremonial resolution

Council member Edith Marlowe is asked to put a line from the Declaration into a city resolution. The staff report notes that the Declaration is a historical statement and the city is bound by the Constitution and the Idaho Constitution. She uses the Idaho Constitution's article I, section 1, which is law, for the operative language and the Declaration's phrase for the preamble.¹⁵

The editor checking a Madison quote

Editor Silas Porter reads a column in which "Nature's God" is attributed to the Constitution. He checks. The phrase is in the Declaration, and Madison used it in Federalist No. 43 to defend ratification by nine states. The Constitution itself does not contain it.⁴⁹¹ He asks for a correction.

The citizen reading the statute

Resident June Alder reads Idaho Code section 33-1602 before a school board meeting. She notes that the statute lists the Declaration among key documents and names several principles, and that it was amended in 2025 and 2026. She checks the current text before quoting a subsection number in her comment.²⁶

The student journalist covering a debate club

Student reporter Kiran Bell covers a debate club round on whether the Declaration "is part of the Constitution." She asks both teams for their sources. One team cites the Chief Justice's 2025 report that the Declaration is printed in the Organic Laws and is aspirational, and the other cites Lincoln's apple and picture. She reports both positions, names the source of each, and notes that the Constitution's own text does not contain the Declaration's language of a Creator or unalienable rights.²²¹¹

Related lessons: The Declaration After 1776; The Text, Clause by Clause; The Civil War Amendments.

What This Lesson Could Not Confirm

• The exact date of Lincoln's fragment on the Constitution and the Union, which is undated.
• The contents of Maier's, Allen's and Armitage's books, which this lesson knows only through the Princeton page and the publisher's page.
• The wording of Douglass's 1860 Glasgow speech beyond the excerpt in a textbook supplement.
• Any scholarly count of the Declaration's grievances, which differs by author: the Chief Justice's report counts 27.
• The origin of the Declaration's ideas in specific books, which Jefferson's 1825 letter names only loosely.

Related Lessons

Lesson 5, The Text, Clause by Clause; Lesson 7, Declarations of Rights; Lesson 8, The Declaration After 1776. For the Constitution itself, see Origins of the Constitution, Reading the Constitution, Amending the Constitution and The Civil War Amendments.

Sources & Further Reading

Primary Sources

• National Archives, Declaration of Independence transcription
• National Archives, Constitution transcription
• National Archives, Bill of Rights transcription
• National Archives, Constitution Amendments 11-27
• Avalon Project, Federalist No. 43
• Avalon Project, Federalist No. 39
• Avalon Project, Federalist No. 1
• Avalon Project, Virginia Declaration of Rights
• Avalon Project, Blackstone, Commentaries, Book I, chapter 1
• Founders Online, Jefferson to Henry Lee, May 8, 1825
• Lincoln, Fragment on the Constitution and the Union
• Chief Justice Roberts, 2025 Year-End Report
• Idaho Constitution art. I
• Idaho Code 33-1602

Secondary Sources and Further Reading

• Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Princeton, Virginia Declaration of Rights
• Douglass, Glasgow speech excerpt (Gillman, Graber and Whittington)
• Teaching American History, Douglass, What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?
• Teaching American History, Lincoln, Reply to the Dred Scott Decision
• Dred Scott v. Sandford
• Adarand Constructors v. Pena
• Obergefell v. Hodges
• Harvard WCFIA, Armitage, The Declaration of Independence: A Global History

Footnotes

1. National Archives, The Constitution of the United States: A Transcription, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript. Quotations are from this page. A search of the transcription for "slave," "Creator," "unalienable" and "God" found none of those words in the text (the page does use "Year of our Lord" in the attestation), and "equal" appears only in phrases such as "equally divided," the electors "equal to" the members of Congress and "equal Suffrage in the Senate."
2. Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., 2025 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary (December 31, 2025), https://www.supremecourt.gov/publicinfo/year-end/2025year-endreport.pdf. Source for the statement that the Declaration "was then, and remains today, a statement of national aspirations, not a codification of enforceable legal obligations"; its place in the Organic Laws of the United States rather than the general and permanent laws (44 Stat. 1 and 44 Stat. 778 (1926)); the count of 27 grievances; the 56 signers; the quotations from Wilson, Lincoln, Mill, Anthony, King, Harlan and Coolidge used below; and the discussion of Scalia's remark in A Matter of Interpretation at 134. A Chief Justice's year-end report is a public statement and does not decide cases.
3. U.S. House Office of the Law Revision Counsel, The Organic Laws of the United States, https://uscode.house.gov/static/independence.pdf.
4. National Archives, Declaration of Independence: A Transcription, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript.
5. Founders Online, Thomas Jefferson to Henry Lee, May 8, 1825, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-5212. A recollection written 49 years after the event.
6. Avalon Project, William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Book I, chapter 1, "Of the Absolute Rights of Individuals," https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/blackstone_bk1ch1.asp. The Avalon text keeps the original long "s"; quotations here use modern spelling.
7. Avalon Project, Virginia Declaration of Rights, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/virginia.asp. Sixteen articles, adopted June 12, 1776.
8. Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Princeton University, Virginia Declaration of Rights, https://jeffersonpapers.princeton.edu/declaration-of-independence/virginia-declaration-rights/. The page says that scholars including Pauline Maier and Danielle Allen "have demonstrated the connections" between the second paragraph of the Declaration and article 1 of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, and lists Allen, Our Declaration (2014) and Maier, American Scripture (1997).
9. Avalon Project, The Federalist No. 43 (Madison), https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed43.asp. The passage answers the objection that nine states could supersede the Confederation, which required unanimity, by appeal to "the transcendent law of nature and of nature's God."
10. Avalon Project, The Federalist No. 39 (Madison), https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed39.asp.
11. Avalon Project, The Federalist No. 1 (Hamilton), https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed01.asp.
12. Avalon Project, Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina, December 1860, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp.
13. Cornell Legal Information Institute, Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857), https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/60/393. Chief Justice Taney's opinion; Justices Curtis and McLean dissented.
14. Teaching American History, Abraham Lincoln, Reply to the Dred Scott Decision, June 26, 1857, https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/reply-to-the-dred-scott-decision/.
15. Idaho Legislature, Idaho Constitution art. I, sections 1, 2 and 3, https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idconst/ArtI/Sect1 (and Sect2, Sect3 at the same address).
16. National Archives, The Constitution: Amendments 11-27, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/amendments-11-27. Source for the text of section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment.
17. Howard Gillman, Mark A. Graber and Keith E. Whittington, American Constitutionalism, vol. II, supplementary material, excerpting Frederick Douglass, "The Constitution of the United States: Is It Pro-Slavery or Anti-Slavery?" (Glasgow, 1860), https://tmkeck.expressions.syr.edu/wp-content/uploads/frederick-douglass-glasgow-speech.pdf. The editors' headnote reports that Douglass first shared Garrison's view of the Constitution as a "covenant with Hell" and announced a "change of opinion" in 1851. This lesson read only the excerpt and the editors' note.
18. PBS, Africans in America, Frederick Douglass, "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" (July 5, 1852), https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2927t.html; and Teaching American History, https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/what-to-the-slave-is-the-fourth-of-july/. Delivered at Rochester for the Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society.
19. National Archives, The Bill of Rights: A Transcription, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-transcript. Source for the text of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.
20. National Park Service, Lincoln Home National Historic Site, Gettysburg Address, https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/gettysburgaddress.htm.
21. Dickinson College, House Divided Project, Fragment on the Constitution and the Union, https://housedivided.dickinson.edu/sites/lincoln/fragment-on-the-constitution-january-1861/. The fragment is undated and traditionally assigned to January 1861.
22. American Battlefield Trust, Alexander Stephens, Cornerstone Speech, March 21, 1861, https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornerstone-speech.
23. Cornell Legal Information Institute, Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena, 515 U.S. 200 (1995), https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/515/200. Justice Thomas, concurring, wrote that the paternalism of the program "is at war with the principle of inherent equality that underlies and infuses our Constitution" and cited the Declaration.
24. Cornell Legal Information Institute, Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015), https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/14-556. Justice Thomas, dissenting, wrote that the majority "rejects the idea, captured in our Declaration of Independence, that human dignity is innate."
25. Harvard Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, David Armitage, The Declaration of Independence: A Global History (Harvard University Press, 2007), https://www.wcfia.harvard.edu/publications/declaration-independence-global-history. The page says more than one hundred declarations of independence have been written since 1776.
26. Idaho Legislature, Idaho Code sec. 33-1602, https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idstat/Title33/T33CH16/SECT33-1602. The history line ends "am. 2025, ch. 279" and "am. 2026, ch. 317." Check the current text before relying on a subsection number.