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hmmmmm..... 1790?

now I will have to quibble... the document was “adopted” by the Constitutional Convention in Sept. 1787, ratified by the 9th new state (New Hampshire) in 1788...which brought the national (constitutionally) into existence with that 9th state ratification.... . and the new federal govt began to operate (in a formal sense) in March 1789

then the first 10 amendments were ratified in 1791

I suppose if one thinks we had to wait on lil’ ol’ Rhode Island to be the 13th ratification then 1790 is the important year.... but the United States of America existed, legally and constitutionally, in 1788.

North Carolina and Rhode Island took longer to get their acts together, but there was a USA with 11 states in existence in 1788

maybe we should all speak of 1787-1791, since virtually everyone nowadays thinks of the “Bill of Rights” as part of the original constitution

but how it can be “revisionism” to regard the Declaration of Independence as something prior to our “constitution” well I look forward to what you have to say about that

in what sense was there a “constitution” prior to even the Articles of Confederation??? which were themselves explicitly not a constitution for a NATION, but rather an agreement on how newly sovereign entities could “confederate”

the real, dramatic “revisionism” is in saying there could be a “constitution” before there even was a United States of America... I wouldn’t argue with Lincoln’s sense that a series of ideas and beliefs and documents from 1776 onward could be embraced into some larger conception of the USA as a nation, but this is not the UK where there is explicitly an uncodified “consitution” which they sometimes refer to there.... we have an actual document called the “constitution” and regardless of rarefied theories expanding the constitutional universe, the 1787-91 text is (I believe) the main referent of the word “constitution” for 99.9% of Americans (well let’s leave out those who don’t even know that a constitution was ever written or ratified)