Constitution Day: What They Didn't Teach You

September 17 marks Constitution Day, the anniversary of the document's signing in 1787. Most conversations about the Constitution focus on what it says. This one focuses on why it exists at all.

By the mid-1780s, the united states were barely united. The Articles of Confederation had carried the country through a war but couldn't govern it in peace. States printed their own currencies, taxed each other's goods, and left soldiers' war debts unpaid. In Massachusetts, armed farmers marched on courthouses to stop foreclosures, clashing violently with privately funded militias. Shays' Rebellion made headlines, but the unrest it revealed was already simmering across the confederation.

That instability raises a question historians still argue over: was the convention called to protect the people, or to protect the property and financial interests of an elite class threatened by debtor uprisings and economic chaos. It's a debate that has followed the Constitution since ratification, and one with no easy answer.

Join us for a night of drinks, conversation, and a closer look at the fears and pressures that convinced a generation who had just broken free of one strong central government that they needed to build another. Come with questions. Leave with a few new ones.

Leading the conversation is Katherine Thrailkill, a high school history teacher at Mountain View High School and a James Madison Fellow, currently pursuing her second master's degree in American History and Government at Ashland University. Katherine brings a classroom teacher's gift for making complicated history accessible without oversimplifying it.