UAMS Marks Constitution Day
| Sept. 16, 2011 | Abraham Lincoln’s famous quote from his Gettysburg Address reassuring Americans that its “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth,” has come to symbolize what democracy and the U.S. Constitution is all about.
Jon Wolfe, Ph.D., director of planned giving for the College of Pharmacy, lectured at UAMS to a lunchtime crowd to mark Constitution Day.
How the Civil War and the Constitution intertwined was the theme today of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences’ (UAMS) commemoration of Constitution Day (celebrated a day early) in a presentation by Jon Wolfe, Ph.D., director of planned giving for the College of Pharmacy.
“The Civil War years between 1860 and 1865 marked a very challenging and deadly time for America,” Wolfe said. “The fact that this document and the people it was made to protect made it through that horrid time was beautifully summed up by Abraham Lincoln in that quote.”
The U.S. Congress, aware of the impact the U.S. Constitution has on nearly every aspect of American life, has mandated that all educational institutions in the United States that receive federal funding offer a program on the U.S. Constitution each year on U.S. Constitution day, which is Sept. 17. This was the date that delegates to the Constitutional Convention signed the document, sending it to the people of each state for ratification.
With this year marking the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, Wolfe highlighted the Battle of South Mountain that took place Sept. 16, 1862, and one a day later the following year on Sept. 17, 1863 at the Battle of Antietam. Both battles were fought by his great grandfather, George Washington Wolfe, who was a member of the 130th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, which was a nearly 1,000-men strong group of inexperienced – but willing – force.
“The Battle of Antietam saw the most casualties in a single day in the history of the United States,” Wolfe said. “Of the 113,000 troops, 22,700 were killed, wounded or captured, accounting for nearly 20 percent of all who were there.”
His great grandfather’s 130th Infantry lost 25 percent of its men, but not the elder Wolfe, he said.
“In comparison, on D-Day there were 73,000 troops and 2,499 who were killed,” Wolfe said. “Antietam was not only the first battle where images were captured and relayed in newspapers all over, but it was the battle that prompted Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.”
The lesson in Civil War history, Wolfe said, served as a reminder on Constitution Day the timelessness of the document and how even through challenging times, its creation to govern a new world more than 220 years ago is a model that is still referred to as the ultimate guide to law in the United States.