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A polity built from the ground up: Ceorge Washington Addressing the Constitutional Convention 'bx Junius Brutus Stearnst1856)
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As its bicentennial birthday approaches, the Constitution is receiving
renewed attention from students and scholars with various perspectives
Two hundred years ago this May 25,
a group Thomas Jefferson called
"an assembly of demigods" gath
ered in Philadelphia to repair the
Articles of Confederation, the
loose compact adopted in 1781 by 13 sover
eign and squabbling states Over a swelter
ing summer, the delegates hammered out
something more than mere repair For the
first time in history, a polity was built from
the ground up by consensus, not force. And
on Sept 17, .'IP demigods signed the docu
ment that gave rise to what Jefferson in his
first Inaugural described as "the text of
civil instruction.”
Of all the sacred texts of the American
civil religion, the U S. Constitution is at
once the least and the best known. It lacks
the egalitarian eloquence of the Declara
tion of Independence. It has none of the
somber poetry of the Gettysburg Address.
As opinion polls show, Americans are igno
rant of many of its most important specif
ics. And yet, as the late emigre political
theorist Leo Strauss liked to say, the Con
stitution is in the bones" of the American
people. In such ordinary statements as
I hey can’t do this to me,” people express
the essence of a constitution: rules that
rulers have to follow. Constitutionalism is
the belief that law governs government,
not the other way around. Americans, how
ever unwittingly, are constitutionalists.
Even so, the approaching bicentennial
has provoked grumbling in some quarters
that constitutional education in America is
not what it should be. What the grumblers
mostly have in mind, of course, is civics.
Thmytant a reverential view of t he Const i
tutflMftan approach that drives Prof.
JamWjavid Barber of Duke University, a
leading scholar of the presidency, to joke
that "one might now say symbolically that
the Constitution’s going to be taught in the
theology department, since we treat the
Founding Fathers like saints.”
in fact, colleges are offering a w ide range
of constitutional studies in this bicentenni
al year, providing hot h critical and \vorship
ful analysis New courses have been added
at schools from William and Mary to the