Category: The Colonial Period

In the Gregorian calendar, the founding document written by the Founding Fathers was written in 1787. A full eleven years after Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence. It makes you wonder what kind of Confederate anarchy abounded in the missing decade. Certainly the Articles of Confederacy – the loose collection of guidelines which bound the former colonies from 1777 – gave some legitimacy to the nation – allowing them to declare war, barter with Europeans and so on. But the infant country needed to stand up and toddle, and this was when the Founding Fathers grabbed onto the couch, and dragged themselves up to take those first steps.

As the name might suggest, something constitutional happened at the convention in Philadelphia. The Founding Fathers wrote the holiest of holies – the Constitution. It took them from May to September, so it’s lucky that it was so brief, as often when you lock a bunch of crusty old men into the conference center of a Motel 6 for a few months, they come up with a bloated collection of random thoughts and power point slides.

Maybe it was because they had to write everything by hand that the Constitution is so refreshingly short, or maybe they were all busy partying at night and just snoozing in the day for the first 100 days, and then realized that they had to get something to show for the expense accounts to be validated when they got back home.