This beautiful hardcover volume contains the two documents every American and citizen of the world should read: the complete text of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America, along with all 27 of its amendments. A full, analytical index of the original Constitution and all of its ratified amendments follows. On July 4, 1776, in the midst of the Revolutionary War, the thirteen colonies of the United States ratified a document that would later be known as the Declaration of Independence. In it, the Continental Congress and the people it represented declared they were no longer under the rule of Great Britain and were now the United States. The Delegates who convened at the Federal Convention in Philadelphia on May 25, 1787, agreed to construct a new framework for a national government. Throughout the next four months, led by their elected president, George Washington, they debated the proper form such government should take. Once the Constitution was constructed, the debates that ensued in state senates while it was being ratified by each state made clear the need for additions to the basic framework drafted in Philadelphia to protect certain liberties at the core of American traditions. James Madison, then a member of the new United States House of Representative, drafted a list of amendments to guarantee the freedoms that Americans hold dear that would become known as the Bill of Rights.