Few documents known to history have received as much praise as the
United States Constitution. Gladstone called it "the most wonderful work
ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man." The
casual reader of the Constitution will be at a loss to account for such
adulation. It will seem to him a businesslike document, outlining a
scheme of government in terse and well-chosen phrases, but he is apt to
look in vain for any earmarks of special inspiration. To understand the
true greatness of the instrument something more is required than a mere
reading of its provisions.

The Constitution was the work of a convention of delegates from the
states, who met in Philadelphia in May, 1787, and labored together for
nearly four months. They included a large part of the best character
and intellect of the country. George Washington presided over their
deliberations. The delegates had not been called together for the
purpose of organizing a new government. Their instructions were limited
to revising and proposing improvements in the Articles of the existing
Confederation, whose inefficiency and weakness, now that the cohesive
power of common danger in the war of the Revolution was gone, had become
a byword. This task, however, was decided to be hopeless, and with great
boldness the convention proceeded to disregard instructions and prepare
a wholly new Constitution constructed on a plan radically different from
that of the Articles of Confederation. The contents of the Constitution,
as finally drafted and submitted for ratification, may be described in
few words. It created a legislative department consisting of a Senate
and a House of Representatives, an executive department headed by a
President, and a judicial department headed by a Supreme Court, and
prescribed in general terms the qualifications, powers, and functions of
each. It provided for the admission of new states into the Union and