NSDAR press release
At a recent meeting, the Sarah Maples Chapter, NSDAR of Mabank, celebrated Constitution Week. The meeting was all the more interesting because the guest speaker was Kaufman County Judge Bruce Wood. Wood reminded the members and guests that the U S Constitution was the shortest written of any major government in the world. It consists of 4,400 words and was penned by Jacob Shallus, a Pennsylvania General Assembly clerk. He was paid $30 for his efforts. The Constitution was created by our Founding Fathers and the document was signed by 39 brave men.
It took 100 days to frame the Constitution. The first Congress of the United States included 54 delegates of the Constitutional Convention or delegates to the various state- ratifying conventions. This number also included seven delegates who opposed the ratification.
The Constitution was ratified by specially elected conventions beginning in December 1787. Thirteen states accepted the new constitution in the following order: Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Virginia, New York, North Carolina and Rhode Island. Rhode Island was next to the last state to ratify its state convention by a vote of 34 to 32. The last vote to ratify the Constitution was a vote of 108 to 5 by Vermont on January 10, 1791.
A proclamation by President George Washington and a congressional resolution established the first national Thanksgiving Day on Nov. 26, 1789. The reason for the national holiday was to give “thanks” for the new Constitution.
It is amazing; the Constitution has served this country so well for 236 years, yet the word “democracy” does not appear anywhere in the document. As evidence of its flexibility, the Constitution has only been changed 17 times since 1791.