Leaman D. Harris
The Edmond Sun
EDMOND —
To the Editor:
In the first installment of a series exploring the historical meaning of the U.S. Constitution (Opinion, Saturday, May 22, 2010, The Edmond Sun ) Don Powers writes in his first paragraph: “The work of hammering out a written Constitution took until Sept. 17, a month before British Gen. Charles Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, Va., ending the War for Independence.”
I would like to think this was just a typo indicating the wrong year, but Cornwallis surrendered in October 1781, six long years before the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia in 1787. A peace treaty was signed in 1783 officially ending the Revolutionary War. Powers is right in stating that the fledgling United States struggled in near anarchy during those years under the Articles of Confederation.
It’s just that with that glaring historical error in the first paragraph I found it hard to take anything seriously in the remainder of the article. What else might be out of context or historical order? If Powers really does teach classes about the Constitution I would advise him to at least get the historical context correct before starting the next one.
Leaman D. Harris
Edmond
