Should the Constitution be viewed as a sort of extension of the ideas in the Declaration, as suggested in the Gettysburg Address and innumerable times thereafter? I would say no, for the following reasons:
- The Declaration was war propaganda. It was designed to make a case for independence to wavering colonists and the governments of European nations. Other than making the statement that “all men are created equal,” which obviously flew in the face of slavery, it says little about the kind of government that should be created in the newly free colonies, or how the individual colonies should relate to each other.
- The Constitution was written 11 years later, by a different group of people, with the experience of the Articles of Confederation in mind. It was about the enhancement and allocation of central government power, not the right to self-determination. Unlike the Declaration, it went through a ratification process. Far more people were involved in its ultimate approval.
In short, the documents are just too different, both in process and substance, to warrant considering them as parts of a single unified whole.