The Scattered Legacy

On September 17, 1787, thirty-nine men gathered in Philadelphia to sign their names to the Constitution of the United States. Yet this historical moment did not signify an end to their work. The unique and consuming process of ratification would take the delegates of the Constitutional Convention to their respective states, where hundreds of thousands of Americans would decide the issue placed before them—to remain a loosely joined confederacy of states, or unite and truly become one nation. Rarely in human history do we witness the growth and sharing of knowledge that took place during this period. Thousands of newspaper articles, private letters, and legislative debates ensured that few, if any, could remain ignorant of the proposed Constitution. The people’s intimate link to the thoughts and ideas of the Framers, as well as those of common citizens, engendered the kind of civic engagement that is essential to good government.

Sadly, that link between citizen and Founder is less common today. The letters, speeches, and journals of our Founders are kept in hundreds of brick libraries, archival institutions, and private collections throughout the U.S. and even Europe. These documents, the best history of our Constitution and Framing, are virtually inaccessible to "We The People," whether sixth grader or Supreme Court Justice, and history is largely taught and made without reference to them. As a result, far too many Americans lack the inspiration to participate in "We The People," and therefore risk undermining a government created "of, by, and for" such people.

The Solution

"We The People" can be reinvigorated and inspired to govern ourselves better by having direct access to the words of our Founders.

The Project

The Constitutional Sources Project was founded in 2005 as a 501(c)(3) non-profit to facilitate research, increase understanding, and encourage discussion of the U.S. Constitution by creating and maintaining the first, free, fully-indexed, comprehensive online library of constitutional sources.

Towards this goal, the project launched ConSource.org on Constitution Day, September 17, 2007 with five core founding collections containing roughly 1,000 documents. Washington's Papers, a collection of over 17,000, was added in time for President's Day February 2008. For these content additions, over 50,000 students were taught about the Constitution via webcast. Over the remainder of 2008, ConSource augmented the original collections with the ratification debates of New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island, as well as the pre-1787 state constitutions, the Papers of George Mason, and political sermons of the Founding period. In all, 2008 witnessed the addition of some 18,000 documents to the digital archives at ConSource.org.

The Advantage

ConSource stands alone in its efforts to connect “We The People” with the thoughts and ideas of the Framers. High-resolution original images give users the opportunity to see exactly what the readers of the late 1780’s saw. The advanced search capabilities of transcribed text, scholarly certification standards, and constitutional cross-referencing of each document ensure that everyone, from the sixth-grader to The Supreme Court Justice, has direct access to the ideas that helped forge a nation.

ConSource currently works with The State Bar Associations of New York, Pennsylvania and Texas, Hillsdale, and the law schools of Georgetown and the University of Utah in our efforts to reinvigorate and inspire “We The People.” As of November 2008, ConSource has had over 2,000,000 unique visits and has been used in classrooms and courtrooms across the country, including the Supreme Court.

In his July 25, 2008 Legal Times article, Tony Mauro said: “Supreme Court justices on both sides in the landmark DC v. Heller gun rights case resorted to original document in making their case about the meaning of the Second Amendment. But they used a little-known digital resource to get there, a project whose mission is to digitize thousands of Founding-era documents that shed light on the…meaning of the Constitution[,] The Constitutional Sources Project.”

2009 Collections

By the end of 2009, funding permitting, the Project aims to have added the private correspondence of Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin, as well as a collection of various Founders’ drafts of the Constitution to ConSource.org. These important collections will provide unprecedented access to the thoughts and ideological underpinnings of the Constitution’s Framers.