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On December 15, 1791, the U.S. Bill of Rights was ratified. Ratified nearly three years after the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights is one of the United States’ three founding documents, comprising the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
At the Constitutional Convention, underlying tensions existed between the Federalist and Anti-Federalists about passing and ratifying the Constitution. The Convention convened to address the difficulties and ultimate failings of the Articles of Confederation, our first governing document.
Anti-Federalists feared that the Constitution's enumeration of federal powers, without similar provisions for the rights of the people, would allow the federal government to grow too powerful, just as the government the American revolutionaries had overthrown only eight years earlier.
Ultimately the Anti-Federalists agreed to ratify the U.S. Constitution only if a Bill of Rights was promised to be added at a later date. That date came when James Madison, as one of the first acts of Congress proposed 17 constitutional amendments in the House of Representatives. The amendments passed the House and were minimized to 12 in the Senate. The U.S. Senate changed the proposal to only contain 12 amendments, and settled the decision in a joint conference committee ultimately sending the passed amendments to the states for their ratification.
Finally, on December 15, 1791 10 of the amendments were ratified by a requisite 3/4ths of the states. Amendments 3-12 became the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution—our Bill of Rights. The first proposed amendment never passed, and the second became our 27th amendment 203 years later.
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