Bill of Rights Ratified
On December 15, 1791, the first ten amendments to the Constitution were ratified. Known as the Bill of Rights, they spell out the freedoms the government cannot take away.
Where this fits on the timeline. When the delegates signed the Constitution in 1787, it explained how the new government would work but said almost nothing about the rights of ordinary people. That gap nearly sank the whole project. To win over the states, supporters promised to add protections for individual freedom as soon as the new government met. Those protections, the first ten amendments, were ratified on December 15, 1791, and are known as the Bill of Rights.
The missing piece
A Constitution with no list of rights. During the fight to ratify the Constitution, its opponents, the Anti-Federalists, warned that a powerful new national government with no written guarantee of rights could trample freedoms the way the British king had. George Mason, who had helped write the Constitution, refused to sign it partly for this reason. Several states agreed to ratify only on the understanding that a bill of rights would be added right away, a deal remembered as the Massachusetts Compromise.
The other side of the argument. Not everyone thought a bill of rights was a good idea. Alexander Hamilton argued in Federalist No. 84 that listing specific rights was unnecessary and even dangerous: the federal government had only the powers the Constitution gave it, and writing down some rights might suggest that any right left off the list was fair game. That very worry is why the Ninth Amendment was later written the way it was.
Madison changes his mind
The Father of the Bill of Rights. James Madison had once thought a bill of rights unnecessary, but after the Constitution was ratified he took up the cause in the First Congress in 1789, both to keep the promise made during ratification and to head off demands for a second convention that might undo his work. Drawing on George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776) and ideas sent in by the state conventions, Madison proposed a set of amendments and pushed them relentlessly. The House trimmed his list to 17, the Senate to 12, and on September 25, 1789, Congress sent twelve amendments to the states. Ten became law when Virginia cast the deciding vote on December 15, 1791.
The ten amendments
Ten short rules that still shape daily life. First Amendment. Protects five freedoms: religion, speech, the press, peaceful assembly, and the right to petition the government. Second Amendment. Protects the right to keep and bear arms, tied to the need for a well-regulated militia. Third Amendment. The government cannot force people to house soldiers in their homes in peacetime. Fourth Amendment. Guards against unreasonable searches and seizures; to search you or your property, officials generally need a warrant based on probable cause. Fifth Amendment. Protects the accused: a grand jury for serious crimes, no being tried twice for the same crime (double jeopardy), no being forced to testify against yourself, a right to due process of law, and fair payment when the government takes private property. Sixth Amendment. Guarantees a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury, the right to know the charges, to question witnesses, and to have a lawyer. Seventh Amendment. Guarantees a jury trial in most non-criminal (civil) court cases. Eighth Amendment. Bans excessive bail and fines and 'cruel and unusual' punishments. Ninth Amendment. Just because a right is not listed does not mean people do not have it; the people keep other rights too. Tenth Amendment. Any power the Constitution does not give the federal government is reserved to the states or to the people.
The two that got away
Twelve proposed, ten ratified. Of the twelve amendments Congress sent out, the two at the top of the list did not pass in 1791. One set a formula for the size of Congress and was never ratified. The other said a raise or cut in congressional pay could not take effect until after the next election, so voters could weigh in first. That one sat unfinished for two centuries, until in 1992 it was finally ratified as the 27th Amendment, the longest ratification in American history. Its revival was sparked by a University of Texas student named Gregory Watson, whose 1982 term paper arguing it was still alive earned a grade of C before he proved his professor wrong.
The First Amendment was not first
A quirk of the numbering. Because the two amendments listed ahead of it failed to be ratified in 1791, the amendment we now call the First Amendment was originally listed third. When the ten were added to the Constitution, the old third through twelfth simply became the new first through tenth. The most famous amendment in the world got its number by accident.
From the federal government to everyone
At first, only the national government had to obey it. For its first decades, the Bill of Rights limited only the federal government, not the states, as the Supreme Court confirmed in Barron v. Baltimore (1833). That changed after the Fourteenth Amendment (1868): over the next century the Court gradually applied, or 'incorporated,' most of these protections to the states too. You can see the Bill of Rights at work in famous landmark Supreme Court cases like Miranda v. Arizona (1966), which made police read suspects their Fifth Amendment rights; Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), which gave people who cannot afford a lawyer the Sixth Amendment right to one; and Tinker v. Des Moines (1969), which protected students' First Amendment speech at school. More than two centuries later, the Bill of Rights is still argued over in courtrooms every day.
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Key Takeaways
The Bill of Rights is the first ten amendments to the Constitution, ratified December 15, 1791
Anti-Federalists demanded it before they would support the Constitution; the promise to add it helped win ratification
James Madison, the “Father of the Bill of Rights,” pushed it through the First Congress in 1789
Congress sent 12 amendments to the states, but only 10 were ratified in 1791; one of the other two later became the 27th Amendment in 1992
It protects freedoms like speech, religion, and a fair trial, and reserves unlisted powers to the states and the people
At first it limited only the federal government; after the 14th Amendment, most protections were extended to the states
Key Figures
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