Essay on History: United States and Certain Unalienable Rights

Submitted By Mike-Gibbons
Words: 404
Pages: 2

Where do we begin to understand Liberty/Freedom vs. Order? These are very different but the same in many different ways. Just because we have one, doesn’t meant that we have all. Our fore fathers wrote “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed;” (1) it says that ALL men are created equal, but it does not say that all men will be treated equal.
In the case of Plessy vs. Ferguson the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to approve Louisiana’s separation law as “Separate but Equal”. In document 6, John Marshall Harlan asks “why is white men and colored men not allowed in the same coach, if the same two men are walking in a public highway is ok?” Yes, colored men have the same accommodations but they are not treated equal. They are to use separate coaches, drinking fountains, restaurants, and many other every day amenities. Because the African who were imported to be slaves did not have the same rights as those who were born here. These laws would not be abolished until the 1960’s.
Spanish-American war is another example of Freedom vs. order. In this conflict we took over the Philippines and Puerto Rico, and justified it by saying they were uncivilized and uplift the savages, to