“The Constitution: Liberty’s Legacy” is an expanded American Village educational program which traces the history of our nation’s most enduring document from its basic foundations in Colonial Virginia all the way to the halls of Philadelphia where in the long, hot weeks of a Pennsylvania summer, a group of our nation’s first citizens, accomplished the unimaginable –they enshrined liberty into a new form of government, beginning with the words “We the People.”

American Village costumed historical interpreters put students into the scene as a new nation is forged. Your students are there as:

• Delegates to the Virginia Convention, which set in motion the Declaration of Independence and an eleven-year chain of events culminating in the United States Constitution.
• Soldiers in the Continental Army, among the first, to see the need for a government to provide for the common defense.
• Participants in discussions between Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren discovering that compromise is the best path to promote the general welfare of a fledgling nation.
• Visitors in the home of George Washington, who presided over the Constitutional Convention and calmed the storms of a tumultuous new nation.
• And, finally delegates to the Constitutional Convention to become a part of “the Miracle of Philadelphia”

The American Village is unique in its mission to strengthen and renew the foundations of American liberty and self-government through citizenship education. More than a field trip, The American Village educational program is tied directly to objectives in the state course of study and graduation standards. The American Village is located in Montevallo in Shelby County just off I-65 at the 234 exit.

Note: These lesson plans require the free Adobe Acrobat viewer, available here.

The Republic for Which it Stands The Constitution for The United States of America

Lesson Plans:

• Get to Know the Constitution
• Roots of the Constitution
• Strengths and Weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation
• Colonial America's Basic Ideas of Constitutional Government and Rights
• Who Were the People at the Constitutional Convention?
• The Constitutional Convention of 1787
• Constitutional Right to Vote

Biographies:

• Benjamin Franklin
• Thomas Paine
• Alexander Hamilton

Time Line of Historical Events

The Thirteen Colonies