Roosevelt's 1937 proclamation for the Constitution's 150th anniversary

An illuminated 1937 sheet prints Franklin D. Roosevelt's proclamation, dated 4 July 1937 and countersigned by Cordell Hull, setting 17 September 1937 to 30 April 1939 as a period of commemoration for the Constitution, framed by oval portraits of its signers. NAID 515119.

What the sheet prints

The proclamation text is set in black-letter type under a crest of flag and eagle. Around it run small oval portraits of the men who signed the Constitution, each captioned with a name and a state, from "Go. Washington VA." to "Abr. Baldwin GA." At the foot are the signatures of the President and the Secretary of State and the imprint of the United States Constitution Sesquicentennial Commission. A further signature reads M. Buehler.

Now, therefore, I, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, hereby designate the period from September 17, 1937, to April 30, 1939, as one of commemoration of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the signing and the ratification of the Constitution and of the inauguration of the first President under that Constitution.

[...]

We shall recognize that the Constitution is an enduring instrument fit for the governing of a far-flung population of more than one hundred and thirty million, engaged in diverse and varied pursuits, even as it was fit for the governing of a small agrarian nation of less than four million.

How to read it

FRAME tags the sheet for transfer and glittering generalities. The faces of the framers lend their standing to the document in the middle, and the text quotes the Preamble's broad aims. That description is accurate, and it is not an accusation. Commemorating the charter of the republic is a proper thing for a president to do, and this one does it with the Preamble's aims quoted and the founders on the border.

The sentence worth reading twice is the one about fitness. The proclamation says the same Constitution that served a small agrarian nation of under four million serves more than a hundred and thirty million people in varied work. That is a claim about the document's durability. It is also, read one way, a claim about its flexibility, and who gets to decide how far a fixed text can stretch is the oldest argument in American government. The sheet does not take up that argument. A reader in 1937 or now can accept the tribute and still ask whether "enduring" means the limits endured too.

The same borrowed-prestige device shows up, in a gentler form, on the 1927 print of the frigate Constitution. The names of the devices come from the Institute for Propaganda Analysis, which published its list the same autumn the commemoration began. The Roosevelt administration essay covers the New Deal's own publicity, from the Blue Eagle to the government films.