How Firm A Foundation
American Documents: The Constitution
2026 is America’s 250th birthyear. To celebrate, I’m highlighting 50+ significant American documents from our history. So far I have covered The Mayflower Compact, Patrick Henry’s Speech, The Lee Resolution, The Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Treaty of Paris, the Virginia Plan, and The Northwest Ordinance.
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WELP. This is the big one. The United States Constitution.
You could be forgiven for erroneously stating (like I have, many times this year) that the Constitution was ratified in 1789. It wasn’t. Ratification happened in 1788. And it was written in 1787.
Believe it or not, there was a time in this country when we actually deliberated over important legal questions and then made it difficult, on purpose, to alter them, because human volition is a fickle beast and there are long-term consequence to laws imposed under tense conditions.
The Constitutional Convention lasted for WEEKS, and by WEEKS, I mean MONTHS. They started in May of 1787 and didn’t finish until September. They broke for recess, they had smaller committees to discuss minutiae, and obviously they had the Sabbath once a week.
Side note: if you’re like me and you love Charlie Brown, check out the Peanuts episode they did about the Convention. It runs for 24 minutes. Like all of the American history episodes they made (eight in all), they got a lot of the details right.
Anyway, since we’re celebrating 250 years for the Declaration, in another 11 we’ll get to celebrate the same milestone for the Constitution.
So what’s in it?
The Constitution, which is the iron law of the land and the basis upon which all our laws are dependent, consists of seven articles.
Article 1: (Legislature) Establishes Congress and who gets to be in it, along with what powers they have. There’s a House and a Senate. How those seats are filled has been…messed with over the years. We’ll cover that later.
Article 2: (Executive) Establishes the Presidency. Who is eligible for it, and what the office does.
Article 3: (Judiciary) Establishes the Supreme Court, who is eligible to be on it, and its duties as it relates to the other two branches.
Article 4: (Federal limitations) Establishes the relationship between the Fed and the States, while defining barriers between them.
Article 5: (Amendment process). This is the article that makes it very hard to screw with the Constitution…though in the last 239 years, they’ve pulled it off a few times.
Article 6: (Supremacy) Establishes that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and thus no individual state can make a law that nullifies or provides exemptions for the contents thereof.
Article 7: (Ratification) We don’t talk about this one as much because historically it was a one-time thing. It established a numbers threshold for States to ratify the Constitution. Fortunately it wasn’t challenged or tested, because ratification was unanimous.
With these articles and their contents, we have one of the most powerful and unique foundational documents of any republic in the history of mankind. It’s so awesome that people strive and fight and lie and suffer and die just for the attempt to live under the conditions it provides. If you were born, legally, under the Constitution as a citizen of the nation it created, congratulations. You won THE birth lottery as far as citizenship goes. Take care of it.
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