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After the Revolutionary War ended, the Constitution was written to create a government that would put power in the hands of the people and would guarantee certain basic rights for its citizens. It was written and signed in the Assembly Room of the Pennsylvania State House, now known as Independence Hall, the same place the Declaration of Independence was signed. The Constitution was written during the Constitutional Convention in the summer of 1787 and was officially signed on September 17, 1787. There were several authors and contributors to the Constitution of the United States. James Madison, one of the Founding Fathers, is known as the "Father of the Constitution" and is credited as the main author of the May 1787 Convention in Philadelphia. However, Gouverneur Morris, an American Statesman, and one of the Founding Fathers, was the author of the Preamble of the Constitution.
We, the people of the United States, 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.
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In 1814, two years after America declared war on Great Britain, British troops invaded Washington D.C. and burned the White House, the Capitol Building, and the Library of Congress. Their next target was Baltimore, where Fort McHenry was located. Francis Scott Key was on a ship negotiating the release of a prisoner of war held by the British. They were still on the ship near Fort McHenry when the British started bombing. The British were unable to completely destroy Fort McHenry and eventually gave up. The next morning, Key was inspired when he saw the American flag still flying over Fort McHenry after the battle and wrote the poem originally titled "The Defense of Fort M'Henry" on September 14, 1814. Key was a successful lawyer in Maryland and Washington D.C. and was later appointed U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. The poem was later set to music already composed by musician John Stafford Smith and people started referring to it as "The Star-Spangled Banner". In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson announced that it should be played at all official events. It was then adopted as the national anthem on March 3, 1931.
The Garrison Flag that inspired The Star-Spangled Banner from Fort McHenry can be found at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History. To learn more about this flag click here on the Interactive FlagProper etiquette when the National anthem is played: Civilians should face the flag and place their right hand over their heart, while men should remove their hats. Members of the military and veterans not in uniform should salute the flag if it is present.
Oh say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
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The Battle of Gettysburg marked a turning point in the Civil War. It was estimated that there were more than 50,000 casualties during the 3-day conflict. The Gettysburg address was written and given by President Abraham Lincoln on November 19, 1863. It was delivered to honor the men who had fought and died in the Battle of Gettysburg in what is now known as the Gettysburg National Battlefield Park. The address was given at the Soldier Cemetery on Cemetery Hill in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It was given to help inspire and to preserve the United States as one Union.
Gettysburg National Battlefield Park in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
Gettysburg National Soldier Cemetary in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and the site where the Gettysburg address was given."Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."
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The Pledge of Allegiance was written by a minister named Francis Bellamy in 1892 while he lived in New York City. It was originally published in a children's magazine called The Youth's Companion as part of a national public school celebration of Columbus Day. It was formally adopted by Congress as the Pledge of Allegiance in 1942.
Proper etiquette for reciting the Pledge of Allegiance: Standing, removing your hat, facing towards the flag, and placing your right hand over your heart. Members of the military will usually stand at attention and give the military salute.
I pledge allegiance to the Flag
of the United States of America,
and to the Republic for which it stands,
one Nation under God, indivisible,
with liberty and justice for all.
