We can trace our national heritage to events on this date

Today is Constitution Day, a day not celebrated with parades and fireworks, but a day worthy of such exhibitions.

Because while it was our Declaration of Independence on the Fourth of July in 1776 that set in motion the events that led to the founding of a new nation, it was what happened 11 years later, on Sept. 17, 1787, that defined our freedoms.

On that date, 42 of the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention that had convened four months earlier in Philadelphia held their final meeting, with one job remaining: the signing of the Constitution of the United States of America.

Its Preamble, memorized by legions of school children ever since, capsulized the national intent with rhetorical economy: “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.”

Those words endure today, as does the Constitution, which has been amended only 27 time, including those first 10 amendments ratified in 1791 and known as the Bill of Rights.

But while the Constitution remains little changed from that which was signed 223 years ago today, what it means is a constant source of debate.

Some view the document through their own looking glass. Humpty Dumpty told Alice, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” And so today we hear the phrase “we the people” invoked by folks who argue that their view of how things should be is the correct view, even in the face of election results to the contrary.

It wasn’t easy

Perhaps that should not be too surprising. For even as the Constitution was being sent off to the 13 original states for ratification, the document was hardly greeted with the unanimity that Benjamin Franklin had once hoped for.

Delaware was the first to ratify, and it did so unanimously, Dec. 7, 1787. But while some of the Founding Fathers wrote in support of the Constitution, others organized opposition, and few states followed Delaware’s unanimous lead. Massachusetts voted 187 to 168 for ratification on Feb. 6, 1788, and the ratification vote squeaked by, 34-32, in the last of the original 13 states to ratify, Rhode Island on May 29, 1790.

But ratified it was, and today it endures. Almost all of its amendments have provided greater individual freedoms, including the right to vote that was guaranteed to black men in 1870 and to women in 1920.

That more than half the nation’s population was disenfranchised by the Constitution is perhaps the clearest evidence that it was an imperfect document. But recall again the words of its Preamble. It did not claim creation of a perfect union, only one “more perfect” than that which existed the day before.

It aspired to perfection, and as a people, that’s what we should be doing today to celebrate the potential of a nation more just, more tranquil and more secure than that of yesterday.