Much of what we hold dear as Americans we owe to what our Founding Fathers accomplished in the summer of 1787 and the extraordinary document they signed on Sept. 17. Constitution Day should be celebrated throughout our country but rarely is. That day comes and goes every year without ever coming up in our conversations. Local and national media rarely mention it. Perhaps a review of the circumstances surrounding the Constitution’s creation will awaken us from such neglect.
The Continental Congress was a provisional government concerned primarily with prosecuting the Revolutionary War. The first attempt at establishing something permanent was the Articles of Confederation. The government thus created was weak by design. The founders feared that a strong central government would take away the liberties they had fought to secure, but they were too cautious. Consequently, laws enacted by the Confederation Congress were little more than recommendations, and within four years after defeating Great Britain, the United States was in chaos. Foreign nations expected our fledgling country to collapse. Civil unrest in Massachusetts and other states was seen as proof that the public was incapable of governing itself.
A convention was planned to find a solution. The meetings would begin in May of 1787 in Philadelphia. Every state but Rhode Island sent representatives. George Washington’s decision to attend added to the gathering’s prestige and attracted other prominent and able men. Thomas Jefferson called it “an assembly of demigods.”
One of the first things the delegates agreed on was to keep their deliberations strictly confidential until their work was completed. Instead of merely revising the Articles of Confederation, as Congress and the states had instructed, these founders set about creating a completely new document and a truly national government. James Madison is called the “father of the Constitution” because he was the driving force behind the convention and the Virginia Plan, the starting point for discussion.
Working every day except Sunday, they debated the important matters and compromised on differences. After four months of meetings, they agreed on a final draft. On Monday, Sept. 17, 1787, the convention convened for the last time to sign the Constitution. Washington went first; 38 other delegates came forward by state. Their average age was 44. At 81, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania was by far the oldest framer of the Constitution.
In only four pages, the document provided a brilliant blueprint for a new federal government, limited in its jurisdiction over states and citizens but strong enough to be effective. The Preamble states the purpose:
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
No one had more intimate knowledge of the workings of the Constitutional Convention than James Madison, who wrote:
STOP DEFENDING ‘DEMOCRACY’ — IT’S THE REPUBLIC WE’RE LOSING
Whatever may be the judgment pronounced on the competency of the architects of the Constitution, or whatever may be the destiny of the edifice prepared by them, I feel it a duty to express my profound and solemn conviction … that there never was an assembly of men, charged with a great and arduous trust, who were more pure in their motives, or more exclusively or anxiously devoted to the object committed to them, than were the members of the Federal Convention of 1787, to the object of devising and proposing a constitutional system which would … best secure the permanent liberty and happiness of their country.
Our nation’s 250th anniversary earlier this year was a wonderful time to read the Declaration of Independence. How fitting it would be this Sept. 17 to also read the Constitution and contemplate the enormous impact that document and our adherence to it have had on us all, individually and collectively.
Randolph G. Russell is the author of American History In No Time: A Quick & Easy Read for the Basics