The U.S. Constitution: A Reader

Featuring 113 primary source documents, The U.S. Constitution: A Reader was developed for teaching the core course on the U.S. Constitution at Hillsdale College.


Divided into eleven sections with introductions by members of Hillsdale's Politics Department faculty, readings cover:

-the principles of the American founding;

-the framing and structure of the Constitution;

-the secession crisis and the Civil War;

-the Progressive rejection of the Constitution; and

-the building of the administrative state based on Progressive principles.

America's Founders created a form of government which had, in the words of James Madison, "no model on the face of the earth." Its moral foundation is in the Declaration of Independence and its principle of equal natural rights. Under the Constitution, government was to be limited to protecting those rights.

In recent decades, the way our government operates has departed from the Constitution. Government has become less limited, and our liberties less secure. At the same time, true civic education in America--education in the Constitution--has largely died out. We at Hillsdale College see it as one of our highest duties to reverse this.