Eli Skinner Chapter Creates Constitution Week Display for Arlington Heights Library

As part of the Eli Skinner Chapter's Constitution Week commemoration, this year the display is up from the first week of August through Constitution Week, September 17 through 23rd at the Arlington Heights Memorial Library. As Proclamations are returned from the local municipalities, they will be added to the showcase.

Constitution Week covers two of the three principles, education and patriotism, which the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution promotes in its "Service to America." It was started by the NSDAR in 1955, when they petitioned Congress to set aside September 17 through 23 annually to be dedicated for the observance of Constitution Week, and was signed into public law #915 by President Dwight David Eisenhower on August 2, 1956.

Members are encouraged to enter the Constitution Week Committee-sponsored yearly poster contest, which is now open to the public as well. Don't forget to ring bells and fly your flags September 17 through 23rd!

An excerpt from The Constitution Committee Website:

"We the People of the United States of America, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

The Preamble is the opening statement of the Constitution. It is a concise proclamation of the values at work in the comprehensive document. It is thought the Preamble to the Constitution was written by Governor Morris, (1752-1816). We do not know with certainty if any one man proposed the words of the Preamble, or if it was devised and revised by a whole committee. This statement gives the American citizens, not the government, the power of rule.

The Constitutional Convention of 1787 created the most lasting written Constitution ever created by human hands...for 110 days, the men who were at Philadelphia from May 25-September 17, hammered out a document that was the outcome of dozens of compromises and shaped by the issues of the United States under the Articles as well as failures of well-known European governments of the time.