Happy Constitution Day, America!

Today we celebrate the creation of a remarkable document:

The Constitution of the United States.

Talk about an outstanding product of statecraft and communication.

"On Sept. 17, 1787, the U.S. Constitution was signed by 39 brave men who changed the course of history." Read more at the National Constitution Center, a Philadelphia history museum devoted to the Constitution.

Here's the Preamble to the Constitution in its original form:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, 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.

Read more at the National Archives and in the educational resources section of the U.S. House of Representatives Web site.

If you had a good history or social studies teacher in high school, you might have learned the mnemonic FEIPPS as a way to recall why the Constitution was written. The six letters in FEIPPS refer to the six reasons cited in the Preamble.

Read illuminating quotations about the Constitution from a variety of Americans and others. This collection was compiled by Robert Delaney of Long Island University.

If it feels odd to be moved by an 18th century document handwritten on parchment, consider this excerpt from The Lay of the Last Minstrel by Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832):

Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!

Read more here and here.

And if you'd like to feel like a fly on the wall during the early days of the United States, watch the 2008 HBO Films miniseries John Adams. It's based on David McCullough's 2001 biography of the same name. The book won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize (Biography or Autobiography category).