Constitution Day

EDITORIAL

Just because we’re not reading it this

year doesn’t mean it’s not in use

Monday is Constitution Day. That’s not up there with the big holidays but it certainly was last year in Milam County.

In 2017, in a ceremony sponsored by the county’s Masonic Lodges, the entire document was read out loud to a large crowd gathered around the western steps of the courthouse.

Twenty-two persons from all walks of life and all sections of the county read the entire document.

Just because we aren’t doing that this year, don’t think we’ve forgotten about the Constitution. Sure, it’s in the National Archives along with some other hallowed writings, but the Constitution is different. It’s something we use every day whether we realize it or not.

The Constitution is 141 years old now and it’s important for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that’s it’s so American.

What does that mean? Well, it was a new start. At the beginning of this nation we were governed by something called the Articles of Confederation. It didn’t work. The obvious thing to do was fix it.

Except we did an American thing. We wadded it up, tossed it in the trash and started over.

What we got was brand new. And it’s been in use ever since, more like a tool box in the back of your pickup than an artifact in a museum.

In lieu of an out-loud reading this year, here are some facts we might not know, courtesy of the Constitution Day organization.

• It was written as four (large) pages. But there’s a fifth page, describing what the document is, signed by George Washington on Sept. 17, 1787. And that’s why we observe that day as Constitution Day.

• Six persons signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution: George Read, Roger Sherman, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Morris, George Clymer and James Wilson.

• Two very important early Americans didn’t sign it because they were ambassadors in Europe, John Adams in England and Thomas Jefferson in France. Both, of course, became presidents.

• The Constitution does not set the size of the House of Representatives. The original First Amendment attempted to do that but was never ratified by enough states. The House has had 435 members since 1912.

• The Constitution does not require the Speaker of the House to be a member of that body. However, a non-member has never been chosen.

• Remember the “tool box in a pickup” analogy above? In 1921 the document was moved from the State Department to the Library of Congress. The LOC Librarian, a man named Herbert Putnam, drove to the State Department, signed a receipt for both the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, placed them in his Model-T Ford truck and took them to his office.—M.B.