The only source of legitimacy of government in America is from the people.
At the time of the founding of the United States, Samuel Adams stated, “Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote that…he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country.”
At a turning point in the survival of the nation after the Civil War’s bloodiest battle, Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, stating that “this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”