At Ascent Classical Academy of Fort Mill’s first annual Constitution Day assembly, Dr. Condra made the following remarks to the staff and all students in grades K-8:
The purpose of this assembly is for us to celebrate the founding of our country–together as a whole school. The United States of America was not always a country. Our country had to be founded.
The founding of our country was made possible by four virtues in particular: courage, justice, responsibility, and prudence. Our founders showed courage by risking their lives, and daring to do things that had never been done before. They showed justice by doing the best they could to make things fair and equal, and leaving room for us to go even further. They showed responsibility by deciding that we would be our own country, and making laws and rules that would be good for people they would never meet–people like us, who are alive long after our founders have passed away. And they showed prudence, when the odds were stacked against them, by making choices that turned out to be successful, to the amazement of the world.
It was virtues that made our Founding possible. The way it happened was through three important events:
First, we had to decide it was time for us to become our own country. We had to declare our independence from Britain. Now this is an amazing way for a country to begin. In fact, it had never happened before in the world. That is why we have this painting of it hanging in the hallway of our school. It is called Declaration of Independence, and it was painted by an artist named John Trumbull. The painting shows Thomas Jefferson presenting the Declaration of Independence to the Continental Congress. Beside him are John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, who helped Jefferson write it. When all 56 members of the Congress signed it, Ben Franklin said, “We must all hang together, or we shall all hang separately.”
Second, we had to fight the Revolutionary War and win our independence. Britain did not let us become independent without a fight. And at first, the Revolutionary War seemed impossible for us to win. We had the original minutemen, who were famous for being ready to join a battle at a moment’s notice. But we did not have a well trained army, or supplies for an army, or money to buy supplies for an army. George Washington organized Americans into an army as best he could, but he had to retreat and retreat and retreat. Finally, when Washington brought his men across the Delaware River, the British (and the Germans they hired to fight with them) stopped chasing him and decided to rest for the winter. This gave Washington the chance to cross back to the other side of the river and launch a surprise attack on Christmas night, 1776, that gave us hope that we could win. We have a painting of Washington’s daring move in our hallway as well. It is called Washington Crossing the Delaware, and the artist’s name was Emmanuel Leutze.
So: First, we declared independence. Second, we fought and won the Revolutionary War – which took eight years from the time the first shots were fired to the time a peace treaty was signed. Then we had to figure out how to organize ourselves. Who would be in charge of the country? What should each state do for itself, and what did we need a national government for? Everybody seemed to have a different answer to these questions, and our new country started to seem more and more disorganized. Finally, each state sent representatives to a Constitutional Convention in the city of Philadelphia to answer these questions once and for all.
It took four months of discussion and debate to come to an agreement, but finally, on September 17, 1787 – 237 years ago yesterday – the delegates at the Constitutional Convention signed their names to the practical plan for a government of, by, and for the people. It separated the powers of government into a Congress, for making laws, a President, for carrying out laws, and a Court system, for interpreting laws. Our Constitution is the oldest written constitution in the world; it has inspired and served as the model for many nations; and it begins with a statement of the purposes our founders wanted a free people’s government to serve – a Preamble, which you all should be proud of yourselves for learning by heart!