Excerpt from An Introduction to the Study of the Constitutional and Political History of the States, Vol. 1 Three years ago, when I first visited the library of the Department of State at Washington, the Constitution of the United States was kept folded up in a little tin box in the lower part of a closet, while the Declaration of Independence, mounted with all elegance, was exposed to the view of all in the central room of the library. It was evident that the former document was an object of interest to very few of the visitors of Washington. But when I was last in the library, I learned that the Constitution also was being mounted in order to be similarly placed upon exhibition, because, as I understood it, there was a more general desire to see it. It seemed to me that this incident is typical of a considerable change which the last few years have seen in our way of looking at American history. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.