What are the first three words of the United States Constitution?

The first three words of the United States Constitution are “We the People.”

They open the document’s Preamble, which states the purposes of the constitutional government, including forming a more perfect union, establishing justice, ensuring domestic tranquility, providing for the common defense, promoting the general welfare, and securing liberty.

The phrase was shaped by Gouverneur Morris, who led the Committee of Style during the final stage of the 1787 Constitutional Convention. An earlier draft reportedly planned to list the states after “We the People,” but Morris replaced that approach with the broader wording “of the United States.”

The wording mattered because it presented the people as the source of the Constitution’s authority rather than describing the document solely as an agreement among state governments. The Preamble introduces the Constitution but does not itself grant specific governmental powers. Those powers and institutional rules appear in the seven articles that follow.