There are many conservatives whose reverence for the Constitution approaches bibliomancy — they view it as a kind of magical item, to be sworn on, rather than a document — but the Constitution is itself famously the result of a series of difficult political compromises, some of them distasteful. We are fortunate that the men who negotiated it ultimately were able to turn their attention to projects other than defeating their political enemies, for instance building the national institutions of the country and its federal government.