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-Civics-
The United States of America
Is a Democratic Republic - where
the supreme power rests in the body of citizens entitled to vote for officers
and representatives responsible to them.
IN GOD WE TRUST
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Congress, July 4, 1776 The unanimous
Declaration of the thirteen united States of America When in the Course of human events, it
becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have
connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the
separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God
entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they
should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. 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. That to secure these rights,
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the
consent of the governed, — That 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, laying its foundation on such
principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most
likely to affect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate
that Governments long established should not be changed for light and
transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are
more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves
by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train
of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a
design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is
their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new guards for their
future security — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and
such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems
of Government. — The history of the present King of Great Britain is a
history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the
establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let
facts be submitted to a candid world. He has refused his
Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has
forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance,
unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and
when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused
to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless
those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature,
a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. He has called
together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant
from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing
them into compliance with his measures. He has
dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness
his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused
for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected;
whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to
the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time
exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within. He has
endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose
obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass
others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of
new Appropriations of Lands. He has
obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for
establishing Judiciary Powers. He has made
Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the
amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a
multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our
People, and eat out their substance. He has kept
among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our
legislatures. He has affected
to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power. He has combined
with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and
unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended
Legislation: For Quartering
large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting
them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should
commit on the Inhabitants of these States: For cutting off
our Trade with all parts of the world: For imposing
Taxes on us without our Consent: For depriving
us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury: For
transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences: For abolishing
the free system of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing
therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render
it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute
rule into these Colonies: For taking away
our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally
the forms of our Governments: For suspending
our own Legislature and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate
for us in all cases whatsoever. He has
abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging
War against us. He has
plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the
lives of our people. He is at this
time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to complete the works
of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty
and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally
unworthy the Head of a civilized nation. He has
constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms
against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and
Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. He has excited
domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the
inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule
of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and
conditions. In every stage
of these Oppressions we have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms:
Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince,
whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is
unfit to be the ruler of a free people. Nor have we
been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from
time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable
jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our
emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and
magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to
disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections
and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of
consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which
denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind,
Enemies in War, in Peace Friends. e, therefore, the
Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress,
Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of
our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these
Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and
of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are absolved from
all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection
between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally
dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to
levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do
all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the
support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine
Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our
sacred Honor. |
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Gettysburg Address:
Delivered by President Lincoln at the dedication of the Soldiers'
National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on the afternoon of
Thursday, November 19, 1863, during the American Civil War, four and a
half months after the Union armies defeated those of the Confederacy
at the decisive Battle of Gettysburg.
-Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this
continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation,
or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are
met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a
portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here
gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting
and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate...we can not
consecrate...we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and
dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor
power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember
what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is
for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work
which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is
rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before
us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that
cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we
here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that
government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not
perish from the earth.-
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Map of the United States of
America
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· Territory of American Samoa (A group of islands in the South Pacific Ocean, about one-half of the way from Hawaii to New Zealand). · Territory of Guam (Oceania, island in the North Pacific Ocean, about three-quarters of the way from Hawaii to the Philippines). · Territory of the Virgin Islands (The islands are located east of Puerto Rico and north of Haiti in the Caribbean Sea). · Commonwealth of Washington, D.C. (Washington, D.C. is neither a state nor territory, but has a government that resembles both). The District of Columbia is under the direct authority of Congress, and was established from territory ceded by the states of Maryland and Virginia. Formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, the District, or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States, founded on July 16, 1790. The City of Washington was originally a separate municipality within the Territory of Columbia until an act of Congress in 1871 effectively merged the City and the Territory into a single entity called the District of Columbia. It is for this reason that the city, while legally named the District of Columbia, is known as Washington, D.C. · Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (A group of islands in the Pacific Ocean located east of the Philippines and south of Japan). · Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (Caribbean island between the Caribbean Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, east of the Dominican Republic ) was once a territory. · Territories and commonwealths are partially self-governing areas that have not been granted statehood. The indigenous peoples of these areas are citizens of the United States. · These areas may have one non-voting delegate in the House of Representatives |
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President In accordance with Article II, Section I of the U.S. Constitution: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully
execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of
my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United
States." Congress: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the
Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic;
that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this
obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and
that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I
am about to enter: So help me God". At
the start of each new Congress, in January of every odd-numbered year, the
entire House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate performs a solemn
and festive constitutional rite that is as old as the Republic. While the
oath-taking dates back to the First Congress in 1789, the current oath is a
product of the 1860s, drafted by Civil War-era members of Congress intent on
ensnaring traitors. The
Constitution contains an oath of office only for the president. For other
officials, including members of Congress, that document specifies only that
they "shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation to support this
constitution." In 1789, the First Congress reworked this requirement into
a simple fourteen-word oath: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will
support the Constitution of the United States." For
nearly three-quarters of a century, that oath served nicely, although to the
modern ear it sounds woefully incomplete. Missing are the soaring references to
bearing "true faith and allegiance;" to taking "this obligation
freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion;" and to
"well and faithfully" discharging the duties of the office. The
outbreak of the Civil War quickly transformed the routine act of oath-taking
into one of enormous significance. In April of 1861, a time of uncertain and
shifting loyalties, President Abraham Lincoln ordered all federal civilian
employees within the executive branch to take an expanded oath. When Congress
convened for a brief emergency session in July, members echoed the president's
action by enacting legislation requiring employees to take the expanded oath in
support of the Union. This oath is the earliest direct predecessor of the
modern oath. When
Congress returned for its regular session in December 1861, members who
believed that the Union had as much to fear from northern traitors as southern
soldiers again revised the oath, adding a new first section known as the
"Ironclad Test Oath." The war-inspired Test Oath, signed into law on
July 2, 1862, required "every person elected or appointed to any office
... under the Government of the United States ... excepting the President of
the United States" to swear or affirm that they had never previously
engaged in criminal or disloyal conduct. Those government employees who failed
to take the 1862 Test Oath would not receive a salary; those who swore falsely
would be prosecuted for perjury and forever denied federal employment. The
1862 oath's second section incorporated a more polished and graceful rendering
of the hastily drafted 1861oath. Although Congress did not extend coverage of
the Ironclad Test Oath to its own members, many took it voluntarily. Angered by
those who refused this symbolic act during a wartime crisis, and determined to
prevent the eventual return of prewar southern leaders to positions of power in
the national government, congressional hard-liners eventually succeeded by 1864
in making the Test Oath mandatory for all members. The
Senate then revised its rules to require that members not only take the Test
Oath orally, but also that they "subscribe" to it by signing a
printed copy. This condition reflected a wartime practice in which military and
civilian authorities required anyone wishing to do business with the federal
government to sign a copy of the Test Oath. The current practice of newly sworn
senators signing individual pages in an elegantly bound oath book dates from
this period. As
tensions cooled during the decade following the Civil War, Congress enacted
private legislation permitting particular former Confederates to take only the
second section of the 1862 oath. An 1868 public law prescribed this alternative
oath for "any person who has participated in the late rebellion, and from
whom all legal disabilities arising therefrom have been removed by act of
Congress." Northerners immediately pointed to the new law's unfair
double standard that required loyal Unionists to take the Test Oath's harsh
first section while permitting ex-Confederates to ignore it. In 1884, a new
generation of lawmakers quietly repealed the first section of the Test Oath,
leaving intact today's moving affirmation of constitutional allegiance. |
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