“We the people…”

The United States Constitution is the oldest written constitution still in existence today. For many of us, it’s hard to imagine that the words so often quoted were not always as we now know them. In the drafts produced during the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 and the final product signed on Sept. 17, 1787, many changes were made. One of the most important was in the very first line.

There were multiple versions of the Preamble. It started out as “That the Government of the United States,” changed to “We the people of the States of…” listing the 13 colonies, and finally became what we now know, “We the people of the United States.” That change was down to one man - James Wilson, who would later become a Supreme Court Justice.

That change was so critical that Abraham Lincoln actually used it as a primary argument as to why the South had no constitutional authority to secede from the Union. The Southern states argued, ‘we are sovereign states and we can leave the Union if we want.’ Lincoln said they’re not, because ‘we the people of the United States, as a whole, are the ultimate source of authority.’ Therefore, a majority of the people of the United States had to agree before that could be changed in any way.

The entire American system of government rests on this principle - that the American people are the creators of fundamental law.

Wilson would die penniless and be largely forgotten by history, yet his words live on and every American owes him a debt without measure.