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Not To Be Dispirited Essay

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Not to Be Dispirited
In many ways it appears that the Constitution of the United States was meant to abnegate the spirit of the Declaration of Independence. However, if one follows the history of our nation’s founding from the first colony to the ratification of the Constitution it is possible to see that the new form of government prescribed therein serves to protect the human rights that were proclaimed as the rights of all men in the Declaration. Recognizing permits a view of the Constitution as giving new life to the spirit of revolution. The authors of the Constitution held a view of a union between the states that was free yet orderly, with powers invested in the union distributed in such a way so as to protect the rights of the people. In order to achieve this balanced union they created a style of government that encapsulated concepts and idea from multiple sources, including the Declaration of Independence. The final document entailed a complex system that gave considerable powers to a national government, to be split between three branches: the Judiciary, the Legislative, and the Executive, while leaving the states with some degree of autonomy. Though many expressed concerns over a stronger central government as a whole, the greatest controversy was over the form and function what would be the President of the United States. Due to a deep seeded fear of the tyrannical rule of a monarch, the thought of a powerful national government headed by a single magistrate raised the hackles of many an American. In order for the Constitution to pass muster this misunderstanding of the executive had to be addressed. To understand how a representative democracy embody the spirit of the Declaration of Independence it is helpful to think of the “drafting of the Constitution not as an isolated event but as the last act in the total drama that was the American Revolution.”1 From 1607, when the first colony was formed in Ja...

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