Collins: Celebrate the gift the United States gave to the world

On Sept. 17, 1787, 39 men representing 12 of the 13 American states signed the United States Constitution in Philadelphia. On Thursday we celebrate Constitution Day primarily in recognition of the fact that this was the first popularly conceived, drafted and ratified plan of self-government in the history of the world.

Constitutional scholar Akhil Reed Amar recently stated that because of what we Americans did in 1787, more than half of the world’s population now lives in representative democracies with written constitutions, the rule of law and independent judicial review.

Many people naively assume that when the Constitution was signed, the new governmental system was a done deal. Such was not the case; it would not go into effect until at least nine states ratified it in specially created conventions of the people.

The first to ratify was Delaware. South Carolina was eighth, following a convention in the Exchange Building in Charleston. The opposition was led by Rawlins Lowndes, a Charleston lawyer who was wary of the clause in Article VI making federal laws supreme. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, famous for his service as a general in the War of Independence, told the delegates, “Our freedom and independence arose from our Union and without it we could neither be free nor independent.”

On July 26, 1788, the New York convention approved the Constitution by a vote of 30-27 but attached proposed amendments guaranteeing individual rights. Historians now agree that our Bill of Rights was a “gift of the Anti-Federalists.”

The soaring language of the preamble, starting with “We the people,” referred at the time only to the free adult men. Over time the Constitution was amended to include people of color, women and those over the age of 18.

On Friday, the S.C. chapter of the American Board of Trial Advocates will present its eighth annual James Otis program in the S.C. House chamber. Selected students from all over the state will sit at the legislators’ desks. It is open to the public.

Let us all be thankful for our Founding Fathers who labored to, in the words of the preamble, “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”