Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
5 Facts About the U.S. Constitution
5 Facts About the U.S. Constitution
Mar 17, 2026 12:53 PM

Tomorrowis Constitution Day, a holiday celebrated in America every year on September 17, the anniversary of the day the framers signed the document. Here are five facts you should know about the U.S. Constitution:

1. The Constitution contains 4,543 words, including the signatures and has four sheets, 28-3/4 inches by 23-5/8 inches each. It contains 7,591 words including the 27 amendments. It is the oldest and shortest written Constitution of any major government in the world.

2. Thomas Jefferson did not sign the Constitution. He was in France during the Convention, where he served as the U.S. minister. John Adams, who at the time was serving as the U.S. minister to Great Britain during the Constitutional Convention, also did not attend the signing. The only men who both became presidents andsigned the Constitution were George Washington and James Madison.

3. There was a proposal at the Constitutional Convention to limit the standing army for the country to 5,000 men. George Washington sarcastically agreed with this proposal as long as a stipulation was added that no invading army could number more than 3,000 troops.

4. The Constitution’s iconic opening line was not included in early drafts of the document. The preamble originally started with individual states listed from north to south: “We the people of the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts…” et al. The five-person Committee of Style is considered to have been responsible posing much of the final text, including the revised preamble.

5. More than 11,000 amendments have been introduced in Congress. There were no amendments added to the Constitution from 1804 to 1865.This was the longest period in American history in which there were no changes to our Constitution. (The first e after that period was at the end of the Civil War the Thirteenth amendment, which abolished slavery.) Overall, the Constitution has only been changed by amendment seventeen times since 1791.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Self-Sufficiency in Sand Lake
This is a really intriguing story about a munity beset by an unfriendly local tax environment, “Sand Lake civil war: Move to dissolve es down to taxes.” The village government of Sand Lake, Michigan, is threatened with dissolution. As you might expect, those facing the chopping block are crying foul. How’s this for overblown rhetoric? “This is domestic terrorism. It’s an attack on small town USA. I have a personal anger against these people. Their purpose is not the good...
Acton Commentary — Europe: The Unjust Continent
This week’s Acton Commentary from Research Director Samuel Gregg. +++++++++ Europe: The Unjust Continent By Samuel Gregg In recent months, the European social model has been under the spotlight following Greece’s economic meltdown and the fumbling efforts of European politicians to prop up other tottering European economies. To an unprecedented extent, the post-war European model’s sustainability is being questioned. Even the New York Times has conceded something is fundamentally wrong with the model they and the American Left have been...
Acton on Tap: Tolkien and the Free Society
A reminder that tonight’s Acton on Tap promises to be another good one. Jonathan Witt, writer and Research Fellow at the Acton Institute, will lead a discussion about J.R.R. Tolkien’s views on freedom, capitalism, socialism, and distributism, and he will look at some of the ways those views have been misrepresented. The event takes place from 6-8 p.m. at the Derby Station in East Grand Rapids, Mich. (Map it here.) No advance registration is required. The only cost is your...
Acton Lecture Series: Alinsky for Dummies
Joseph Morris at Acton Lecture Series We’re posting the audio from Mr. Joseph Morris’ excellent May 6 Acton Lecture Series presentation, Alinsky for Dummies: His Persistent Influence and Its Meaning for American Society and Politics. As Lord Acton warned that power corrupts, Saul Alinsky — the father of modern munity organizing” — rejoiced that corruption empowers. Saul Alinsky As Morris pointed out, decades after Alinsky’s death his ideas and teaching continue to shape the American political and social landscape. Barack...
Acton Lecture Series: Does Capitalism Destroy Culture?
Michael Miller at Acton Lecture Series In this new Acton Lecture Series audio, Acton’s Michael Miller discusses why many blame capitalism as the primary source of cultural disintegration. Miller, director of programs and Acton Media, asks: Does capitalism destroy culture or are other forces at work? Listen to the lecture online here: [audio: From Miller’s Jan. 21 Acton Commentary, “The End of Capitalism?” At least on equal par with a juridical framework as a factor in sustaining market systems is...
Acton Commentary: Reappraising the Right
In this week’s Acton Commentary, I reviewed a new book by George H. Nash on the history of the American conservative movement: Reappraising the Right By Bruce Edward Walker In his 1950 work, “The Liberal Imagination,” Lionel Trilling famously stated that American liberalism was the one true political philosophy, claiming it as the nation’s “sole intellectual tradition.” Unknown to him, two young men — one toiling as a professor at Michigan State Agricultural College (now Michigan State University) and the...
Public Schools: Adult Employment Programs
I’ve long argued that school choice is the quintessential bipartisan cause, with boundless potential to transform American primary and secondary education. Yet, for various reasons (all of them bad), it has failed to live up to that potential—its significant successes in various places notwithstanding. One more anecdote to file away on this es from Rich Lowry at NRO: the travails of Eva Moskowitz in New York City. Favorite quote: It’s amazing what you can plish, she says, when you design...
Review: William F. Buckley Jr.
Lee Edwards calls William F. Buckley Jr. “The St. Paul of the conservative movement.” No other 20th century figure made such a vast contribution to the intellectual force of political conservatism. He paved the way for the likes of Ronald Reagan and all of those political children of Reagan who credit the former president for bringing them into politics. He achieved what no other had done and that was his ability to bring traditional conservatives, libertarians, and munists together under...
Ecology and Economy
I just finished writing a review of Robert H. Nelson’s book, The New Holy Wars: Economic Religion vs. Environmental Religion in Contemporary America (Penn State University Press, 2010) that will appear later this year in Calvin Theological Journal. It is a good book. It is a timely book. There are flaws, but overall there is much to learn from Nelson’s analysis. I found a good summary passage that appears as a footnote on p. 171: The terms ecology and economics...
Acton Lecture Series: Virtue and Liberty in the American Founding
More audio from this year’s Acton Lecture Series. In “Virtue and Liberty in the American Founding,” Dr. John Pinheiro examines the American Founders’ understanding of liberty as rooted in a classical and Christian understanding of virtue. His talk touched on the reasons why George Washington argued that public happiness could be attained without private morality and why John Adams wrote that, “[I]t is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved