PHOTO: © GREGG NEWTON/CORBIS
The first page of the US Constitution is shown here as it appears today on the floor of the rotunda of the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, DC. The other three pages of the Consti- tution sit to the right of this case in identical aluminum and titanium display cases.
Claypoole’s Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser; however, it was not yet the law of the land. According to the procedure set down by the delegates, the states still needed to hold ratifying conventions to decide whether they would accept or reject the Constitution. Furthermore, the Constitution would not become binding until nine of the thirteen states had approved it. The ninth state to ratify the Constitution turned out to be New Hampshire, which approved it on June 2, 1788. Integral to obtaining ratification in some key states was the promise on the part of those in favor of the Constitution that amendments would be added to explicitly protect personal rights and liberties. Out of this promise grew the Bill of Rights, which became part of the Constitution on December 15, 1791.
What the founding fathers accomplished at the Constitutional Convention was nothing short of a miracle. Although separated by state and sectional differences, they ultimately found a way to work together in a collective fashion to develop one of the most important documents in the history of government. John Adams once de- scribed the delegates’ work at the Constitutional Convention as “the greatest single effort of national deliberation that the world has ever seen.” Perhaps the highest praise for the US Constitution itself, however, has come not from an American but from an Englishman, namely four-time British Prime Minister William Gladstone. In 1878, Gladstone wrote an article for the North American Review called “Kin Beyond Sea.” In the article, he said that the British Constitution was “the most subtle organism which has proceeded from the womb and long gestation of progressive history.” But he called the US Constitu- tion “the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.” ■
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