A greater hope is that all American citizens understand the sovereign power given to them by the Constitution. By their informed votes, the United States can be the best it can be.

Welcome to the blog of Dale Dungan Pullen (late), where you will learn about his book, The 17^th of September Constitution Day. Dale spent a life in writing, and this book is his legacy. So every now and then, we will post an article about themes related to the US Constitution and its glorious history as narrated in this book.

Today, we will answer a repeatedly asked question: why another book on the Constitution? Aren’t there enough already?

There are three main reasons to write this book, and precisely why it is so different from other titles in the genre.

• A Civic Literacy Crisis

Sandra Day O’Connor (1930-2023), who in 1981 became the first woman ever appointed to the United States Supreme Court, once talked about a “crisis in civics education” in the country. She wasn’t wrong. And that was reason #1 why Dale wrote this book.

Even though Congress passed a law in 2005 requiring that students in schools receiving federal funds receive instruction on the Constitution on September 17th, the situation is far from ideal.

David McCullough (1933-2022), the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of John Adams and Harry Truman and author of the bestselling 1776, went a step further and said, “American children are being raised historically illiterate.”

These are just two examples of distinguished individuals who were genuinely worried about civic education in the country. And their observations have been proved true via numerous surveys.

The 17^th of September, Constitution Day, was originally published in 2013. Since then, the crisis has worsened.

The Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania conducts a nationally representative civics survey every year before Constitution Day.

In 2023, one in six American adults could not name a single branch of government, and only one in twenty could name all five rights protected by the First Amendment. In 2024, the same survey showed that 15% of American adults still cannot name any branch of government, and less than half can name most of the rights. The numbers fluctuate from year to year, but the underlying picture does not change.

Likewise, according to a 2024 review of state requirements by the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, eight states require neither a civics course nor a civics test for students to receive a high school diploma, and only four states require both a full-year civics course and a passing civics test.

Hence, we have published the book again this year to fill this gap. “A greater hope,” wrote Dale, “is that all American citizens understand the sovereign power given to them by the Constitution.” (Introduction, page 2.) Only then can America be “the best it can be.”

Thankfully, the most recent surveys show an improvement in civics education.  

• An Untold Story

The Constitution was ratified on September 17, 1787, in the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia, the same building where the Declaration of Independence was signed eleven years earlier.

The document became the supreme law of the land, establishing the American people as the final authority in their own government, dividing power among three independent branches to prevent any one person or faction from accumulating too much of it, and creating a mechanism by which the people could change their own foundational law, which they did almost immediately by adding the ten amendments known as the Bill of Rights in 1791.

It was a landmark moment, acknowledged the world over. For instance, William Gladstone (1809–1898), who served as British Prime Minister four times and is widely regarded as one of the greatest statesmen in British history, called it the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.

However, it was not a smooth process, to say the least. In the chapter on the Federal Convention of 1787, Dale Pullen takes us behind the scenes and shows us how the whole enterprise nearly fell apart multiple times. This version of events is largely untold in popular books on constitutional history.

The delegates were dealing with a shattered country. The states were behaving like separate nations, financial depression had taken hold, farmers were losing their land to debt collectors, and armed rebellion had broken out in Massachusetts. The Articles of Confederation had no enforcement power.

The men who arrived in Philadelphia knew that something had to change, but they disagreed violently about what that something should look like. Small states and large states couldn’t agree on legislative representation.

Slaveholding states and non-slaveholding states were fighting over how enslaved people would be counted. Many of the delegates had just fought the Revolutionary War and were deeply suspicious of creating centralized power at home.

Ultimately, what made the Constitution possible, as Pullen argues, was compromise. In a time when our nation is terribly polarized, this book reminds us that we can still move forward even when we violently disagree.   

• The Political Genius of James Madison

The third and equally important reason to write another book on the Constitution is to remind people about the political genius of James Madison (1751–1836), the Virginia planter, political theorist, and legislator who would go on to serve as the fourth President of the United States from 1809 to 1817.

When Madison arrived in Philadelphia, he was 36 years old. Yet, he was more prepared than anyone else, having spent months studying the history of republics and confederacies, ancient and modern, to understand why governments fail and what makes them last. The result was the Virginia Plan, which Madison drafted and which became the working frame for the entire convention’s debate.

Madison also kept notes of every significant debate from May through September. Those notes were published decades later, without which the story of how the Constitution came to be would be largely lost. He deserves a complete article, which will be uploaded soon.

Madison is buried at Montpelier, his family estate in Orange, Virginia, and a Library of Congress building carries his name. But according to Dale, this recognition falls short of what he contributed to the nation’s history. This book is a small attempt at that.

That’s all for now! Stay tuned for more interesting articles. And if you haven’t already, get a copy of The 17th of September 1787: Constitution Day today.