Explain how the Declaration of Independence, the Northwest Ordinance and the Constitution define the rights and role of the people

Learning goal: Explain how three founding documents elaborate on the rights and role of the people in building the foundations of the American nation: the Declaration of Independence through the principles of unalienable rights and consent of the people; the Northwest Ordinance through its establishment of natural rights and its support for educational institutions; and the U.S. Constitution through the structure it created and the relationship it set between the people and their government.

The Declaration of Independence, 1776. The Second Continental Congress voted for independence on July 2, 1776, and adopted the Declaration on July 4. Thomas Jefferson wrote the first draft for a committee that also included John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, and Congress edited it. The document has three parts: a statement of principles, a long list of grievances against King George III, and the formal declaration that the colonies are free and independent states.

The statement of principles makes two claims that matter for this course. First, all people have unalienable rights, rights that cannot be given away or legitimately taken, "among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Rights, in this view, come from nature or the Creator, not from a king or a legislature. Second, governments are created to secure those rights and derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed." This is consent of the people: a government is legitimate only when the people it governs have agreed to it. From these two premises the Declaration reasons that when a government becomes destructive of those ends, the people have a right to alter or abolish it and to institute a new one. The grievances are the evidence Congress offered that the king had broken that bargain.

The Declaration created no government and no laws. Its role is to state the purpose of government and the standing of the people. Its principles were also a standard that its authors did not meet: many signers enslaved people, and women and American Indians were not treated as parties to the consent it described. Later movements, from abolitionists to women's rights activists at Seneca Falls in 1848, quoted the Declaration to demand that the nation live up to it. That is evidence that the principles outran the practice of 1776.

The Northwest Ordinance, 1787. The Confederation Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance on July 13, 1787, to govern the territory north and west of the Ohio River, the land that became Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and part of Minnesota. It set a path from territory to statehood: first a governor and judges appointed by Congress; then, when a district had 5,000 free adult male inhabitants, a legislature with a house of representatives elected by men owning at least 50 acres and a council chosen by Congress from the house's nominees; and when it had 60,000 free inhabitants, the right to admission as a state (Congress could admit a state sooner) "on an equal footing with the original States." Between three and five states were to be formed, and each new state's government had to be republican, a requirement the Constitution later repeated for every state. Ohio, the first, became a state in 1803.

The Ordinance included six articles of compact that it declared unalterable except by common consent. These establish rights, in the language of the time the natural rights of free people, for the settlers of the territory, before the Bill of Rights existed: freedom of worship for anyone behaving peaceably; the writ of habeas corpus (a court order that makes the government bring a prisoner before a judge and justify holding him); trial by jury; representation in the legislature in proportion to population; no cruel or unusual punishments; no taking of property without compensation; and protection of private contracts. Article VI prohibited slavery and involuntary servitude in the territory except as punishment for a crime (wording the Thirteenth Amendment later echoed), although it also provided for returning people who escaped slavery in the original states.

Article III reads: "Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged." This connects education to self-government: people who govern themselves must be informed. The Land Ordinance of 1785 had already reserved one section in every surveyed township, section 16, to support public schools. Land set aside under the Ohio Company's purchase of 1787 later supported Ohio University, chartered by the state of Ohio in 1804 in Athens. Article III also promised that "the utmost good faith shall always be observed towards the Indians" and that their lands would not be taken without their consent. The wars and treaties of the 1790s that followed show that this promise was not kept, which is part of an accurate account of the Ordinance.

The U.S. Constitution, 1787. The Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia from May to September 1787 and signed the Constitution on September 17. It took effect in 1788 when the ninth state, New Hampshire, ratified, and the new government began in 1789. Its opening words, "We the People of the United States," make the people, not the states or a monarch, the source of the government's authority. This is popular sovereignty, and it turns the Declaration's principle of consent into a working structure.

The Constitution established the foundations of the nation by creating three branches with separate powers (Articles I, II and III), each able to check the others; by dividing power between the national government and the states (federalism); and by limiting government to the powers granted. It gave Congress powers the Confederation had lacked, among them the powers to levy taxes, raise armies and regulate commerce. It set the relationship between the people and their government through elections: the people directly elected the House of Representatives, while senators were chosen by state legislatures until the Seventeenth Amendment of 1913, and the president by electors. Article V lets the people, acting through Congress and the states, amend the Constitution.

A worked model: tracing one principle through all three. Take consent. The Declaration states it as a principle (just powers come from the consent of the governed). The Northwest Ordinance applies it in a territory, by giving settlers an elected house of representatives once population reached 5,000 free adult males and statehood at 60,000. The Constitution builds it into a permanent structure, through elections and a written amendment process. One principle, three levels: stated, applied, institutionalized.

The misconception to avoid. Students often think the Declaration is part of American law, or that the Constitution originally contained a list of rights. The Declaration is a statement of principles and has no legal force as a statute; the original Constitution protected a few rights (such as habeas corpus and the ban on ex post facto laws, which punish an act that was legal when it was done or raise its punishment afterward) but its main list of rights, the Bill of Rights, came later, as the next lesson explains.

Worked comparison of consent: Question: how does each document give the people a role? Declaration: governments derive just powers from the consent of the governed, and the people may alter or abolish a destructive government. Northwest Ordinance: settlers elect a legislature at 5,000 free adult males and may form a state at 60,000 free inhabitants, equal to the original states. Constitution: the people elect the House directly, choose other officials indirectly, and can amend the document under Article V. The step students skip is noticing that the role grows from a principle to a procedure.

Worked reading of Article III: Text: religion, morality and knowledge are necessary to good government, so schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged. Claim: education supports self-government. Mechanism in Ohio: section 16 of each township surveyed under the Land Ordinance of 1785 reserved for schools, and land from the Ohio Company purchase supporting Ohio University, chartered in 1804. Limitation: the same article promised good faith toward American Indians and did not keep that promise; both parts belong in an accurate summary.

Worked evaluation of a claim: Claim: "The Declaration gave everyone equal rights in 1776." Test: the Declaration stated a principle of equal unalienable rights, but it created no law, and slavery remained legal in every state that July. Revised claim: "The Declaration stated a principle of equal unalienable rights that later Americans used to challenge slavery and exclusion." Label: the original claim confuses a principle with a legal guarantee.

Three-document table: Make a table with rows for the Declaration (1776), the Northwest Ordinance (1787) and the Constitution (1787, ratified 1788). Columns: who wrote or passed it; what it is (statement of principles, territorial law, frame of government); what rights it names; what role it gives the people; one limitation or unkept promise. Quote no more than one short phrase per document and cite the part it comes from.

Independent performance: Write a 400-word explanation titled "From principle to practice: the people in three founding documents." Success criteria: it explains unalienable rights and consent of the governed in the Declaration; it names at least three rights in the Northwest Ordinance's articles of compact and explains Article III on education with an Ohio example; it explains how the Constitution sets the relationship between the people and their government through popular sovereignty, separation of powers, federalism and elections; and it identifies at least one group excluded from these rights at the time, stated as fact, not as a vague aside.

Clause check: Before handing in, underline in your essay the words unalienable rights, consent, natural rights, educational institutions and relationship between the people and their government, and next to each write the document and the part it comes from: the article or section for the Northwest Ordinance or the Constitution, and for the Declaration, which has no numbered articles, the part (statement of principles, list of grievances or conclusion). Any phrase you cannot trace to a specific part of a document must be rewritten or removed.