https://padlet.com/zoe_smith8/w3q9h7ahst1ebpc1 What influenced the development of our government institutions? Why and how did the colonists declare independence? Explain the representative government and the reasons why colonists declared their independence. en-us 2020-10-15 15:56:56 UTC 2020-10-15 18:09:02 UTC hello@padlet.com zoe_smith8 https://padlet.com/zoe_smith8/w3q9h7ahst1ebpc1/wish/832910103 When the people left Great Britain they came and founded the states in America they were basically escaping a government that they didn't want to be apart of. 
"During the 1600s, people from Europe migrated to North America, setting along the Atlantic Coast and inland. The great majority of the colonists were Christians familiar with both the Old and New Testament of the Christian Bible. They brought with them Judeo-Christian values and ideas derived from biblical law. For example, the Old Testament discusses how the law should apply equally to all people, even kings, and sets forth rules for a fair trial. These beliefs made an important contribution to the founding principles and documents of the United States. Most of the early colonists were from England and considered themselves British. The English settlers formed thirteen colonies under charters from the King of England. Their ideas about the role and shape of government influenced the growth of the colonies, the American Revolution, and the system of government we have today. Many of their ideas about government had been developing in Europe for centuries, including the two basic principles of limited government and representative government. By the time the first European colonists settled North America, the idea of limited government, the concept that a government’s power was not absolute, was accepted in England (page 36)." When finding America, Great Britain claimed they had founded it since they "put a ring on it" or a flag in this case. There were already people living on the land that Great Britain claimed they founded. "Centuries earlier, in 1215, English nobles were upset with the oppressive policies of King John, including unfair taxation and cruel treatment of prisoners. They forced him to sign a document, the Magna Carta, recognizing their rights. The nobles did not think the Magna Carta established permanent principles of government, nor were they thinking of the rights of the common people. As the centuries passed, however, the English people came to regard the Magna Carta as a guarantee of limited government. They believed it protected people from unjust punishment by the government and from the levying of taxes without popular consent. Even after the signing of the Magna Carta, power struggles between the monarchy and Parliament persisted for more than 400 years. In 1688 Parliament removed King James II from the throne with little resistance. It chose two new monarchs who recognized Parliament as supreme, William III and Mary II. The influence of the English Bill of Rights was felt directly in the American colonies. The colonists believed the document applied to them and that they had the same rights as people living in Britain. The king, however, had a different perspective, he saw colonists as subjects of the British Empire without the same rights as those living in Britain. These differing ideas were a major cause of the American Revolution (page 36-37)." The people that lived in America may have believed that they still had the same rights but the king thought otherwise and basically saw them as pawns for Great Britain. ]]> 2020-10-15 16:01:14 UTC https://padlet.com/zoe_smith8/w3q9h7ahst1ebpc1/wish/832910103 zoe_smith8 https://padlet.com/zoe_smith8/w3q9h7ahst1ebpc1/wish/832918643 "For more than a century, relations between the colonies and Great Britain were peaceful. The colonists developed their political institutions without much interference. The colonists were British subjects, and as with other parts of the British Empire, the colonies were supposed to serve as a source of raw materials and a market for British goods. In the eyes of the British crown, the American colonists existed for the economic benefit of Great Britain. In practice, the colonies in America did pretty much as they pleased. The colonies were more than 3,000 miles from Great Britain. News from America and orders from the monarch took two months or more to travel across the Atlantic Ocean. Given this distance, only the governors of the colonies and the colonial legislatures were actually in a position to deal with the everyday problems facing the colonies. As a result, the colonists grew accustomed to governing themselves. Until the mid-1700s, the British government was generally satisfied with this political and economic arrangement. Two events changed the relationship between the colonies and Britain: the French and Indian War and the crowning of King George the 3rd. The French and Indian War started as a struggle between the French and British over lands in what is now western Pennsylvania and Ohio (page 42)." Sometime after this war, the colonists in America sought to break away from British rule and wanted their independence. Having broken away from the harsh rule of King George, the people now needed their own government to lead them so they made the Articles of Confederation. "The harsh new British policies spurred an American sense of community in a way that had not existed before. Prior to the Intolerable Acts, most colonists thought of themselves as British subjects. At the same time, each colony had developed largely on its own and had unique resources and economies. Residents, therefore, thought of themselves as Virginians or New Yorkers or Georgians. By the 1760s, however, a growing number of colonists began to think of themselves as Americans united by their hostility toward British authority. At the same time, colonial leaders began to work together to take political action against what they felt was British oppression. In 1765 nine colonies sent delegates to a meeting organized to protest the Stamp Act and King George’s actions. They sent a petition to the king, arguing that only colonial legislatures could impose direct taxes like the Stamp Tax. By 1773, colonists opposed to British rules were forming organizations to keep in touch with each other and to urge resistance to the British. These groups, called committees of correspondence, sprung up quickly. Within a few months after Samuel Adams formed the first committee in Boston, there were more than 80 such committees in Massachusetts alone. Virginia and other colonies soon joined this communication network, led by prominent members like Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry.  In the First and Second Continental Congress, the colonists passed a series of measures, culminating in their Declaration of Independence from Great Britain. The American Declaration of Independence is one of the most famous documents in history. It stirred the hearts of the American colonists. To that point, no government had been founded on the principles of human liberty and the consent of the governed. In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson drew on the ideas of John Locke and other philosophers to explain the colonists’ need for freedom. The Declaration explained the reasons the American colonies were angry with the British government and confirmed why the revolution was justified (pages 43-47)." However, the Articles of Confederation were soon dismantled after the problems that were caused by the weak central government. After Shays's Rebellion in Massachusetts, Congress had called for a Constitutional Convention where they kept the press out to talk freely, they discarded the Articles of Confederation and then started talking about and writing the new law of government, the Constitution. After the Constitution became law, different groups formed called Federalists and Anti-Federalists, in short, Federalists supported the Constitution and started The Federalist Papers to promote the benefits of having a new government and listing everything that went towards the Constitution to show people why it was better than the Articles of Confederation. But, the Anti-Federalists thought otherwise, they fought and fought and fought against having the Constitution as law and listed the reasons of why the Constitution isn't actually a law and how it doesn't protect the people against the government, showing people that it's not as great as they think it is. The differences between a monarchy and democracy. A monarchy is a form of government where there is one ruler and it is one of the oldest forms of government. The ruler is someone of "royal blood" and the titles of the king, queen, prince, and princess are passed down, whether you're a 37th cousin or the 56th heir to the throne, royal families are huge and they had arranged marriages between distant cousins or just cousins. Democracy is almost completely different from a monarchy. A democracy is when it's up to the people to decide the leader basically. The people have a voice more than they do when living under a monarch's rule. The purpose of government is for people to lead other people, help them, shelter them, create laws to punish criminals, all of it is to lead the people, and create order instead of chaos. Each form of government runs off of different principles, powers, restrictions, leadership, etc. ]]> 2020-10-15 16:03:16 UTC https://padlet.com/zoe_smith8/w3q9h7ahst1ebpc1/wish/832918643