Our National Treasure
 

By Lorianne Updike

When most Americans think of a "national treasure," thanks in large part to Nicholas Cage's "National Treasure" movies, they think of the National Archives, the Library of Congress, and Masonic symbols inscribed on the backs of old documents leading to treasures hoarded by the Founders.

While I seriously doubt any fortune is buried inside of Mt. Rushmore, the Founders did leave us an endless source of wealth - their political "posterity." But too often, this wealth lies dormant, undiscovered, and unattended.

This wealth I speak of is the founding generation's eye witness accounts of our Constitution's creation. This history, recorded on thousands upon thousands of handwritten manuscripts, old newspapers, books, pamphlets, and other media, is housed in over 400 brick libraries and archives in the United States and in Europe.

These treasures include handwritten drafts of the Constitution, Tobias Lear's touching account of George Washington's death, Thomas Jefferson's trans-Atlantic counsel to James Madison during the Constitutional Convention, and the behind-the-scenes letters detailing the Federalist v. Anti-Federalist contest - often depicting discussions of amendments and rights as cloak-and-dagger mini-dramas, testaments to the passionate commitment both sides pledged to upholding the "Spirit of '76."

A small portion of these treasures has been painstakingly transcribed over the past 50 years in documentary editions called the Founding Father Paper Projects. Congress has contributed at least $30M towards this effort. Yet these volumes are not accessible to the general public.

According to a survey of 201 public libraries at the local and state level performed by The Constitutional Sources Project in 2006, not one library had a complete set of the Founding Father Papers Projects. However, even if the general public had library access to these volumes, they would not have access to the Constitution's full documentary record, as the volumes contain only a small portion of all primary constitutional sources. The rich documentary history of the reconstruction era amendments has never been thoroughly collected, digitally or otherwise, let alone documents related to women's suffrage, prohibition, or voting rights of non-minors.

An even smaller portion of our most precious national treasures is online. A few archival institutions have digitized some of their own holdings, notably the Library of Congress, yet collaboration among institutions has been minimal. Where images are provided, the quality is poor and often taken from under or over-exposed microfilm. Other organizations, such as the University of Chicago, Yale, and the University of Virginia provide partial or complete texts of Founding documents online. Search and citation capabilities are relatively limited and the two entities that provide documents in a dedicated database charge substantial subscription fees.

Our national treasures are being preserved, but they are still buried and unavailable for most Americans. If discovered, I am convinced these treasures would transform everything from the classroom to the courtroom and enliven our discussion and understanding of the Constitution that has made and kept us free.

Lorianne Updike is the co-founder and president of the Constitutional Sources Project, creator of ConSource.org, the first, free, fully-indexed online library of constitutional sources.

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