Given the modern legal culture of today, it is difficult to imagine that if a document of such magnitude were written today that its content would be so sparse, more likely it would be quite voluminous. However, the wording is simple and to the point, declaring that a people have the right to "dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another.that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."9 The beginning paragraph is perhaps the most poignant, stating that all men are endowed with certain unalienable Rights, among which are "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness," and that when any government becomes destructive to these ends, "it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government."10 And that is exactly what the Founding Fathers did by drafting the United States Constitution.

             Again, the language of the Constitution is as simple and straightforward as the Declaration of Independence, and again causes pause as to how many volumes it would encompass were it written today. It states that "in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity," this Constitution is established.11 It contains seven articles, most of which are merely one or two sentences in length, the first of which establishes the Senate and the House of Representatives, and the last calling for ratification of the states.12 .

             A month after Abraham Lincoln was elected President in November 1860, South Carolina seceded from the Union, followed within two months by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas.13 Lincoln had stated that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free" and so a month before Lincoln was sworn in as president, Jefferson Davis was named as president of the Confederate States of America.