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Today is Constitution Day, the 223rd anniversary of the signing of the US Constitution Sept. 17, 1787. (It wasn’t ratified by the necessary nine states until 1788.)

Ours is the oldest and shortest written constitution among major governments. More
than 11,000 amendments have been introduced; 33 have gone to states for ratification
and 27 have actually become part of the Constitution. The first 10 of those are the
Bill of Rights, added in 1791.

The law establishing Constitution Day was passed in 2004 (before that, today was known
as Citizenship Day). Here are some links for more information:

• National
  Archives Charters of Freedom: The Constitution

• The National Constitution Center’s Constitution
  Day website (you can see which Founding Father you’re most like and take a US
  citizenship quiz)

• Constitution
  resources from the Library of Congress

• The National Archives’ “Inside
  the Vaults” video on historical documents relating to the writing and ratification
  of the Constitution

• National
  Park Service Independence Hall, where the Constitution was written

• The State
  of the Constitution: What Americans Know (the results of a survey conducted by
  James Madison’s Montpelier)

Find out more about the Revolutionary era in The
Everything American Revolution Book by Daniel P. Murphy, Ph.D., available
from ShopFamilyTree.com.