My grandfather, Justin Rich Eccles, died this year at the age of 97. Every time I saw him in the years leading up to his death, he would grab my hand and ask me, “Savannah, do you still believe in the Constitution?” Usually, I would roll my eyes and say, “Yes, Poppy, and I’ve actually read it as well.”
But, the last time I ever saw him, he wasn’t able to speak. So I told him, “I still believe in the Constitution, and I’m going to teach others to love it as well.” He nodded and gave a thumbs-up.
I hope I am fulfilling that promise in my faculty role at the Center for Constitutional Studies at Utah Valley University. How to help Americans, particularly young Americans, love the Constitution has been heavy on my mind. I believe the key is to tell the constitutional story in its fullness, with each generation playing an active role.
On Constitution Day, Americans usually look backward to Sept. 17, 1787. This year, I propose that we celebrate Constitution Day 1865. And Constitution Day 1868 and 1870. And Constitution Day 1920.
To be clear, Sept. 17, 1787, is well worth celebrating. It represents the culmination of a remarkable summer of compromise, innovation and nation-building on the part of 55 men in a sweltering room in Philadelphia. The framers of the Constitution provided our nation with a durable framework for republican government. The constitutional solar system they created — with its separation of powers, checks and balances, and federalism — is worthy of a love song.
Our task is neither to worship the Constitution nor to discard it, but to know it, argue about it, preserve it and continue the difficult work of making our government live up to its highest principles.
The framers also gave us a Constitution that accommodated slavery, excluded women from political power in practice, and left fundamental questions about citizenship unresolved. It was, in short, an unfinished Constitution.
And so, we must tell the story of Constitution Day 1865, when Americans altered the Constitution to abolish slavery, the institution that had made a mockery of the Declaration of Independence’s promise of human equality. We must celebrate Constitution Day 1868, when Americans welcomed every person born on U.S. soil into the community of citizenship and guaranteed them the privileges and immunities of that citizenship. We must also remember Constitution Day 1870, when Americans prohibited the denial of voting rights on the basis of race.
And, of course, we must remember Constitution Day 1920, the culmination of nearly 80 years and multiple generations of work, when Americans rectified the injustice of denying U.S. citizens the right to vote on the basis of sex.
The years 1865, 1868, 1870 and 1920 are as much a part of our constitutional story as 1787. If we cherish the Constitution, if we seek to guarantee its perpetuation, then extolling the virtues of Philadelphia isn’t enough. We must tell the whole story of a Constitution under construction.
The Constitution is our common inheritance, yes, but inheritance is not spectatorship. The generations who oversaw the ratification of those four amendments understood the weight of that constitutional legacy. They did not preserve the Constitution by putting it under glass for occasional acts of obeisance by the public. They preserved the Constitution by taking its principles seriously enough to fight over them and, when necessary, change it.
Constitution Day isn’t just a birthday party for a document born in 1787. It should be a celebration of American’s ongoing commitment to the work of constitutionalism, of governing ourselves under a Constitution that each generation inherits but no generation owns.
And that brings us to Constitution Day 2026. What will this generation do with its great inheritance? Our task is neither to worship the Constitution nor to discard it, but to know it, argue about it, preserve it and continue the difficult work of making our government live up to its highest principles.
My grandfather used to ask me whether I still believed in the Constitution. I do! I am a true believer in the constitutional story. That story is, as ever, unfinished. It’s our turn to add a chapter.