Excerpted from the 2026 Pulitzer Prize-winning “We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution” by Jill Lepore, David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History and Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.
We the People. The Constitution of the United States is made of things that are born, live, thrive, decay, and die: insects, animals, plants, ideas. In order to form a more perfect Union. Each of its elements began, long ago, in the loamy earth, hatching and creeping or slipping, slick and squealing, from the womb of the mind. Establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility. The text is written on parchment made from sheep, fleeced, their hides soaked in lime, stretched and dried. Provide for the common defense. The ink came from the buds of oak leaves, swollen to the size of musket balls by the eggs of wasps. Promote the general welfare. Its words were shaped by quills fashioned from the feathers of molting geese. Secure the blessings of liberty. Its lofty, momentous ideas came from the minds of men, long since dead, and from the books they read. To ourselves and our posterity. Of the nearly 200 written constitutions, the Constitution of the United States — the most influential constitution in the world — is also among the oldest, a relic, as brittle as bone, as hard as stone. Do ordain and establish.
