The "Amending America: Part I" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Just walked through the door of LancasterHistory.org which is located directly next to former United States President James Buchanan's home, Wheatland, at 1120 Marietta Avenue in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  My wife, Carol, has given me a Christmas gift the past couple of years of a membership to Lancaster Historical Society which includes visits to LancasterHistory.org as well as visits to Wheatland.  

Entrance into Lancaster, Pennsylvania's Historical Society.

I try to take advantage of my membership as often as I can and today is one of those days.  I came to examine the latest traveling exhibit called "Amending America: The Bill of Rights" which tells the story of our Nation's first 10 Amendments to our country's Constitution.  Just before I walked through the front door I just had to snap a few photographs of the early summer flowers as well as a photo of the front of the remarkable building known as LancasterHistory.org.  The exhibit was developed two years ago by the National Archives on the 225th anniversary of the Bill of Rights.  

Entrance into the "Amending America" display

It has traveled around the country with Lancaster History.org being the 11th stop on the tour.  It had stops at the presidential libraries of Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon as well as a museum in Dallas, Texas and most recently at the Jewish Museum of Maryland in Baltimore.  All documents and petitions in the exhibit are naturally reproductions.  To make the exhibit special to Lancaster, local curators assembled a complementary exhibit based on Lancaster's own President James Buchanan and Congressman Thaddeus Stevens.  

Stories posted throughout the display tell
the story of the founding of our country.
Click on images to enlarge.

These two Lancastrians were both powerful politicians, but had totally different views about what powers were permitted and prohibited by the Constitution.  The exhibit is somewhat a hands-on exhibit, allowing viewers to vote and attempt to find (in my case guess) answers to questions about the Bill of Rights.  I, at one time about 60 years ago, knew more about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights being I learned about it in American History class in 10th grade, but today I was glad to have visual aides telling me about each Amendment and the rights it gave to every citizen of the United States.  Our Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to our Constitution, is rooted in English tradition.  But, its creation is a vital part of the remarkable story of American independence.  

As you enter the Amending America area you can see plenty of visuals.

The Bill of Rights represented a joining of the ideals of freedom colonists had come to expect from government and the novel idea of limited government.  

The upper part of one of the displays on The Bill of Rights.

These ideals and the men leading the way were what made the Constitution "admirably calculated to preserve the Union."  The Constitution became a contract with the people, one they could change through the unique Article V, which defined the amendment process.  Twelve amendments were proposed by the First Congress after many citizens expressed support for them.  

The bottom of the display told of events that followed.

Out of those 12, 10 were ratified by the states and became known as our Bill of Rights.  A few quick facts told in number form in the exhibit were: 11,000+ = number of amend- ments that have been proposed since 1787, 27 = number of ratified amendments from those 11,000+ proposals and 10 = number of ratified amendments that became the Bill of Rights.  The exhibit told about "amendment eras" such as the Founders era (1789-1810) which was the generation that wrote the Constitution and considered it a work in progress and changed it 12 times, the Civil War era (1860-1870), with the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, and the Progressive era (1910-1930, which involved expanding citizen's rights through amendments.  

Each of the first 10 amendments has a large title telling
what each amendment did.   

Amendments are important to the Constitution and take time to pass.  Some were talked about for decades before being passed.    Amendments are much different than laws which get passed quite often and deal with existing problems while by passing an amendment you change the structure of our government.  

Exiting the "Amending America" display you came to the display telling
of the part that President Buchanan and Congressman Thaddeus Stevens did.  

I enjoyed viewing the many displays on each of the 10 Amendments, but what I enjoyed the most was the exhibit created by LancasterHistory.org about the impact of President Buchanan and Congressman Thaddeus Stevens.  This separate display was remarkable and told of Lancaster's role in determining the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments.  The following photos will give you a very basic idea of what the main traveling exhibit was like.  Tomorrow I will take you with me as I visit the auxiliary exhibit on Buchanan and Stevens.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.