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The Constitution of the United States is the central instrument of
American government and the supreme law of the land.
For 200 years, it has guided the evolution of governmental
institutions and has provided the basis for political stability; individual
freedom, economic growth and social progress.
The American Constitution is the world's oldest written constitution
in force, one that has served as the model for a number of other
constitutions around the world. The path to the Constitution was neither
straight nor easy. A draft document emerged in 1787, but only after
intense debate and six years of experience with an earlier federal union.
The 13 British colonies declared their independence from England
in 1776. A year before, war had broken out between the colonies and
Great Britain, a war for independence that lasted for six bitter years. While
still at war, the colonies — now calling themselves the United States of
America – drafted a compact which bound them together as a nation. The
compact, designated the «Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union»,
was adopted by the Congress of the states in 1777 and formally signed in
July 1777. In February 1787 the Continental Congress, the legislative
body of the republic, issued a call for the states to send delegates to
Philadelphia to revise the Articles. The Constitutional or Federal
Convention convened on May 25, 1787 in Independence Hall, where the
Declaration of Independence had been adopted 11 years earlier on July 4,
1776. Although the delegates had been authorized only to amend the
Articles of Confederation, they pushed the Articles aside and proceeded to
construct a charter for a wholly new, more centralized form of
government.
The new document, the Constitution, was completed on September
17, 1787, and was officially adopted on March 4, 1789. The 55 delegates
who drafted the Constitution, included most of the outstanding leaders, or
Founding Fathers, of the new nation. All agreed on the central objectives
expressed in the preamble to the Constitution: “We the people of the
United States in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice,
insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, 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”.

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