To: Ilaine who wrote (133227 ) 5/17/2004 9:51:18 AM From: Sam Read Replies (1) | Respond to uw is right that the Constitution was written in secret, roughly between the end of May and Sept 1787. He is on shakier ground in saying that "The organized political liberation process for America began in June 1776." Actually, it began earlier than that, with Sons of Liberty cells forming in the previous decade, and, as you say, the First Continental Congress preceding the Second (like duh)--both were certainly "organized," though most people in the colonies didn't support either. But it isn't as though the shape of the govt to come was implied by the either of the Continental Congresses, or by the Declaration, a document that wasn't really particularly important in the late 1770s or 1780s for that matter. The best book on the writing and influence (or lack thereof) of the Declaration is Pauline Maier's American Scripture. many denominations--a quote from Voltaire is instructive here: When there is one dominant sect, there is tyranny; when there are two dominant sects, there is civil war; when there are many sects, there is tolerance. There wasn't the history of severe repression among the sects in the colonies, although in different parts of them often one sect was supreme and dominated others, sometimes making it illegal for Catholics or Jews to hold office or even vote. But there wasn't in the colonies wholesale murder of opponents, as there has been in Iraq, and therefore the mistrust between the sects wasn't as severe (although it was still present, especially against Catholics and Jews). There was plenty of land, so long as it was considered perfectly just for whites to push Indians off of any land they happened to covet (which was the case until the 20th century). And while there certainly were large cultural differences between northern and southern farmers, transportation and communication was so rudimentary that the differences didn't become critical until much later. They didn't bump into each other that much, and it just didn't matter as long as they could live their lives pretty much as they wanted (except to a few of the very early abolitionists, who tried unsuccessfully to get Congress to draft a long term plan to eliminate slavery in 1790--an attempt that was angrily received by many southerners and resulted in tabling the petition, not considering the question for over 25 years when the Westward expansion forced it and resulted in the Missouri Compromise of 1820).
