The United States has the oldest continuous government of any modern nation, and arguably the most consistent application of its Constitutional principles, but how did we get such a constitution?
This book follows a clear path from King Alfred’s first codification of English Common Law in his Domboc all the way through the 1791 Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution. Many of these documents were written during times of lawful resistance brought against tyrannical monarchs by lesser magistrates and private citizens over many centuries.
When the American colonists faced a tyrannical monarch in the 1700s, they followed the example of their forebears, resisting, declaring their independence, and signing new documents that would further affirm the principles they had sought to live by.
Each chapter explains this context and the circumstances and ideas behind each document. These are not just political theories, but the contracts, resolutions, and constitutions that our forebears bound themselves to as they cultivated land together, built cities together, and fought and bled together.
The documents held within this book are cultural landmarks whose principles guided nearly a millennium of civic thought, and it is worth having physical copies of them. They are a continuous chain of beliefs and goals, connected by blood, sweat, and tears spent across oceans and centuries. They are the signposts along the difficult path of the English-speaking peoples’ costly pursuit of liberty.
