Caring for our nation’s history

From the very first days of its publication, the United States Constitution has been criticized by many as difficult to understand and interpret.

And the physical document itself suffered decades of neglect before it was finally enshrined.

Three delegates refused to sign the constitution upon its approval by the Constitutional Convention, but at the bottom of the fourth page appear the signatures of the rest.

What was written on parchment was then made public, printed in newspapers and broadsheets, often with “We the People” set off in extra-large type.

Meanwhile, the secretary of the convention carried the original from Philadelphia to New York to present it to the Continental Congress, which met, at the time, at City Hall. Without either endorsing or opposing it, Congress agreed to forward the Constitution to the states for ratification.

The original Constitution was simply filed away and, later, shuffled from one place to another.

When City Hall underwent renovations, the Constitution was transferred to the Department of State. The following year, it moved with Congress to Philadelphia and, in 1800, to Washington, where it was stored at the Treasury Department until it was shifted to the War Office. In 1814, three clerks stuffed it into a linen sack and carried it to a gristmill in Virginia, which was fortunate, because the British burned Washington down. In the eighteen-twenties, when someone asked James Madison where it was, he had no idea.

In 1875, the Constitution found a home in a tin box in the bottom of a closet in a new building that housed the Department of State and Department of War. In 1894, it was sealed between glass plates and locked in a safe in the basement. In 1921, Herbert Putnam, a librarian, drove it across town in his Model “T” Ford.

In 1924, it was put on display in the Library of Congress, for the first time ever. Before then, no one had thought of that.

It spent the Second World War at Fort Knox. In 1952, it was driven in an armored tank under military guard to the National Archives, where it remains, in a shrine in the rotunda, alongside the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.