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Constitution Day

Resources for celebrating the U.S. Constitution.

Getting Started

Background -

    To encourage people to learn more about the Constitution, Congress in 1956 established Constitution Week, to begin each year on:

           September 17 -- that was the date in 1787 when delegates to the Convention signed the Constitution.

     In 2004 Senator Robert C. Byrd (West Virginia) included key provisions in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of Fiscal Year 2005 -- that designated September 17 of each year as Constitution Day.

 

This guide is a starting point to becoming aware of, as well as researching, the U.S. Constitution.

To get started, consider reading the text of the U.S. Constitution (links below).

From this page you can:

  • Get the text of the U.S. Constitution
  • Test your knowledge; learn quick facts
  • Get guides to teaching about the U.S. Constitution

Tabs on the left lead to:

  • Constitution - Overview, Analysis, History  -- consider checking some background sources, then explore sources for constitutional history as well as analyses on your topic of interest
  • Amendments -- information as well as links to books
  • Georgia and the U.S. Constitution
  • Constitution Day events & exhibits

 

Some sources on the U.S. Constitution are from digital collections of the Library of Congress and the National Archives. The Georgia Tech Library has many books on the U.S. Constitution and amendments. And, journals, periodicals, and newspapers (historical as well as current) can be useful in your research.

Constitution - text; audio

Preamble (also links to explanation) -

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, 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.

Sources below are reprinted text. For images of original texts, check the images on the page for Constitution - Overview, Analysis, History

 

Constitution - Test your Knowledge

39 delegates to the Federal Convention signed the Constitution on September 17, 1787, per the U.S. House of Representatives' History, Art, and Archives (site also lists the 34 Continental and Confederation Congress delegates who signed).

Georgia ratified it on January 2, 1788

Constitution Day - Teaching Resources

Educational institutions receiving Federal funding are required to hold an educational program pertaining to the United States Constitution on
September 17 of each year. [Federal Register, May24, 2005]

This online guide is part of that effort.

Quote

"The Framers gave us a document durable and flexible enough to take us from the agrarian land of the 18th century, of the musket, the axe and the plow-to the country we know today, of the Internet and the human genome and a thousand different cultures living together in one nation like a glittering mosaic." 
- Michael Beschloss at the ceremony to unveil page two of the Constitution in its new encasement, September 15, 2000, in the Rotunda of the National Archives Building, Washington, D.C.