Declaration Of Independence Justified Essay

For centuries countries not just in Europe, but much of the entire world always had one thing in common with each other, their system of government. Countries had their different cultures, religion, currency, etc. However there was always one ruler with absolute power, this form of government was called absolutism. Absolutism had different names, for example in China the Mandate of Heaven works in the same way that an absolute monarchy does. In England, the monarch justified having control over everything and doing what he pleased by saying he had the divine right to do it. Divine right is the belief that God has chosen a particular person to rule over everyone. Since there is no one greater than God, their monarch became their God, no one

The colonists had asked the king for the same political rights as people in Britain, but were refused. This broke the social contract that the philosopher Rousseau talked about. By having the contract broken, the colonists were justified in rebelling against their government. In July 1776, the Declaration of Independence was written by Thomas Jefferson and was firmly based on John Locke’s ideas of the Enlightenment. He talked about how everyone had basic rights that are to be protected. The Declaration starts off with “we hold these truths to be self evident...unalienable rights… life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. After a long and almost impossible war to win, the United States, with the aid of France, got their independence. The constitution that we have today has been ratified from the weak Articles of Confederation and took many idea from the Enlightenment's greatest thinkers. The delegates making this revised document devised a powerful central government, like Montesquieu. They therefore established a system with checks and balances, which limited the three separate branches to have too much power. To win support a Bill of Rights was also made, these amendments protected basic rights such as freedom of speech, press, assembly, and religion. Many of these which had been advocated by Voltaire, Rousseau and