From Compact to Amendment: How Americans Wrote Their Own Rules

Signed on 21 November 1620 by 41 adult male passengers aboard the Mayflower, it bound them into a civil body politic with just and equal laws. The ship had landed outside the territory of its Virginia Company patent, so the signers needed their own basis for authority, and they rested it on consent rather than a royal charter.

This Act of Parliament taxed printed material in the colonies, including legal documents, newspapers and playing cards, to help pay for British troops after the Seven Years War. Colonial resistance, from the Stamp Act Congress of October 1765 to the Sons of Liberty boycotts, produced the slogan no taxation without representation, and Parliament repealed it in March 1766.

Adopted by the Second Continental Congress on 4 July 1776 and principally drafted by Thomas Jefferson, it grounds the break with Britain in natural rights and follows with a list of grievances against King George III. Its claim that governments draw their legitimacy from the consent of the governed is the idea every later document on this path builds on.

The first written constitution of the United States was finalized on 15 November 1777 and took force on 1 March 1781, once all thirteen states had ratified it. It left a weak Congress without power to tax or regulate interstate commerce, and Shays Rebellion helped persuade many leaders that a stronger framework was needed.

Drafted at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, it took effect on 4 March 1789 and replaced the Articles of Confederation. It divides power among Congress, the presidency and the courts, and it has been amended twenty-seven times, starting with the Bill of Rights in 1791.

Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay wrote 85 essays under the shared name Publius between October 1787 and August 1788 to win ratification of the Constitution, especially in New York. They explain the separation of powers and checks and balances, and courts still cite them when interpreting the text.

Issued by President Abraham Lincoln on 1 January 1863 as commander-in-chief, it declared enslaved people in the states in rebellion to be free. It did not reach the loyal border states or areas already under Union control, but it let freed men serve in the Union forces, and roughly 200,000 Black soldiers and sailors did.

Lincoln spoke for about two minutes on 19 November 1863 at the dedication of the Soldiers National Cemetery, after Edward Everett had spoken for two hours. He recast the war as a test of whether a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal could endure, which ties the Declaration of 1776 to the war being fought.

Adopted on 9 July 1868 as one of the Reconstruction Amendments, it grants citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States and bars states from denying due process or equal protection of the laws. Former Confederate states had to ratify it before regaining representation in Congress.

It forbids denying citizens the vote on the basis of sex. A first such amendment was introduced in Congress as early as 1878, the House and Senate passed it in May and June 1919, and with thirty-six states ratifying it took effect on 18 August 1920.