The Declaration of Independence states the principles on which our government, and our identity as Americans, are based. Unlike the other founding documents, the Declaration of Independence is not legally binding, but it is powerful. Abraham Lincoln called it “a rebuke and a stumbling-block to tyranny and oppression.” It continues to inspire people around the world to fight for freedom and equality.

The Constitution acted like a colossal merger, uniting a group of states with different interests, laws, and cultures. Under America’s first national government, the Articles of Confederation, the states acted together only for specific purposes. The Constitution united its citizens as members of a whole, vesting the power of the union in the people. Without it, the American Experiment might have ended as quickly as it had begun.

The United States Bill of Rights comprises the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. Proposed following the often bitter 1787–88 debate over the ratification of the Constitution and written to address the objections raised by Anti-Federalists, the Bill of Rights amendments add to the Constitution specific guarantees of personal freedoms and rights, clear limitations on the government's power in judicial and other proceedings, and explicit declarations that all powers not specifically granted to the federal government by the Constitution are reserved to the states or the people.

U.S. ownership of the whole Louisiana Purchase region was confirmed in the Treaty of Ghent (ratified in February 1815) and guaranteed on the battlefield at the decisive Battle of New Orleans when the British sent over 10,000 of the best British Army soldiers to try to take New Orleans in a 5 month long campaign starting from September 1814 (First Battle of Fort Bowyer) to February 1815 (Second Battle of Fort Bowyer).

The Star-Spangled Banner is the national anthem of the United States. To celebrate a victory over British forces during the War of 1812, U.S. soldiers raised a large American flag at Fort McHenry in Baltimore, Maryland, on September 14, 1814. Inspired by those events, Francis Scott Key wrote a poem called "Defence of Fort M'Henry," which eventually became the Star Spangled Banner and the United States national anthem. President Woodrow Wilson promoted The Star-Spangled Banner as the possible national anthem. And at last, in 1931, a Congressional Resolution named the song the official national anthem of the United States.

Edict issued by U.S. Pres. Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, that freed the slaves of the Confederate states in rebellion against the Union. Lincoln didn’t actually free all of the approximately 4 million men, women and children held in slavery in the United States when he signed the formal Emancipation Proclamation the following January. The document applied only to enslaved people in the Confederacy, and not to those in the border states that remained loyal to the Union.

The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted American women the right to vote, a right known as women’s suffrage, and was ratified on August 18, 1920, ending almost a century of protest. In 1848, the movement for women’s rights launched on a national level with the Seneca Falls Convention. Following the convention, the demand for the vote became a centerpiece of the women’s rights movement.

The Social Security Act of 1935 is a law enacted by the 74th United States Congress and signed into law by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The law created the Social Security program as well as insurance against unemployment. The law established the Social Security program. The old-age program is funded by payroll taxes, and over the ensuing decades, it contributed to a dramatic decline in poverty among the elderly, and spending on Social Security became a major part of the federal budget.

Civil Rights Act, (1964), comprehensive U.S. legislation intended to end discrimination based on race, colour, religion, or national origin. It is often called the most important U.S. law on civil rights since Reconstruction (1865–77) and is a hallmark of the American civil rights movement. First proposed by President John F. Kennedy, it survived strong opposition from southern members of Congress and was then signed into law by Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson.

Voting Rights Act, U.S. legislation (August 6, 1965) that aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote under the Fifteenth Amendment (1870) to the Constitution of the United States. Considered among the most comprehensive pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. history.