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Robert Longley is a U.S. government and history expert with over 30 years of experience in municipal government and urban planning.
Updated on October 06, 2021How many amendments are in the Bill of Rights? If you answered 10, you are correct. But if you visit the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom at the National Archives Museum in Washington, D.C., you will see that the original copy of the Bill of Rights sent to states for ratification had 12 amendments.
The "Bill of Rights" is the popular name for a joint resolution passed by the first U.S. Congress on September 25, 1789. The resolution proposed the first set of 10 amendments to the Constitution. Adopted as a single unit in 1791, it spells out the rights of the people of the United States in relation to their government.
At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Anti-Federalist George Mason was the leader of those delegates who pressed for the addition of explicit States rights and individual rights to the U.S. Constitution as a balance to the increased federal powers. Mason, was one of three delegates who failed to sign the Constitution in part because it lacked such a statement. Several states ratified the Constitution only on the understanding that a bill of rights would be added quickly.
Drawing on the Magna Carta, the English Bill of Rights, and Virginia’s Declaration of Rights, mainly written by George Mason, James Madison drafted 19 amendments, which he submitted to the U.S. House of Representatives on June 8, 1789. The House approved 17 of them and sent it to the U.S. Senate, which approved 12 of them on September 25. Ten were ratified by the states and became law on December 15, 1791.
Originally, the Bill of Rights applied only to the federal government. One of the amendments rejected by the Senate would have applied those rights to state laws as well. However, the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, forbids states from limiting the rights of any citizen without due process of law, and beginning in the 20th century, the U.S. Supreme Court gradually applied most of the guarantees of the Bill of Rights to state governments.
Then as now, the process of amending the Constitution required the resolution to be "ratified" or approved by at least three-fourths of the states. Unlike the 10 amendments we know and cherish today as the Bill of Rights, the resolution sent to the states for ratification in 1789 proposed 12 amendments.
When the votes of the 11 states were finally counted on December 15, 1791, only the last 10 of the 12 amendments had been ratified. Thus, the original third amendment, establishing freedom of speech, press, assembly, petition, and the right to a fair and speedy trial became today's First Amendment and Sixth Amendment.
Rather than establishing rights and freedoms, the first amendment as voted on by the states in the original Bill of Rights proposed a ratio by which to determine the number of people to be represented by each member of the House of Representatives.
The original first amendment (not ratified) read:
"After the first enumeration required by the first article of the Constitution, there shall be one Representative for every thirty thousand, until the number shall amount to one hundred, after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall be not less than one hundred Representatives, nor less than one Representative for every forty thousand persons, until the number of Representatives shall amount to two hundred; after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall not be less than two hundred Representatives, nor more than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons."
Had the amendment been ratified, the number of members of the House of Representatives could by now be over 6,000, compared to the present 435. As apportioned by the latest Census, each member of the House currently represents about 650,000 people.
The original second amendment as voted on, but rejected by the states in 1789, addressed congressional pay, rather than the right of the people to possess firearms. The original second amendment (not ratified) read:
"No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened."
Though not ratified at the time, the original second amendment finally made its way into the Constitution in 1992, ratified as the 27th Amendment, a full 203 years after it was first proposed.
As a result of the failure of the states to ratify the original first and second amendments in 1791, the original third amendment became a part of the Constitution as the First Amendment we cherish today.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 considered but defeated a proposal to include a bill of rights in the initial version of the Constitution. This resulted in a heated debate during the ratification process.
The Federalists, who supported the Constitution as written, felt a bill of rights was not needed because the Constitution intentionally limited the powers of the federal government to interfere with the rights of the states, most of which had already adopted bills of rights.
The Anti-Federalists, who opposed the Constitution, argued in favor of the Bill of Rights, believing that the central government could not exist or function without a clearly established list of rights guaranteed to the people.
Some of the states hesitated to ratify the Constitution without a bill of rights. During the ratification process, the people and the state legislatures called for the first Congress serving under the new Constitution in 1789 to consider and put forward a bill of rights.
According to the National Archives, the then 11 states began the process of ratifying the Bill of Rights by holding a referendum, asking its voters to approve or reject each of the 12 proposed amendments. Ratification of any amendment by at least three-quarters of the states meant acceptance of that amendment.
Six weeks after receiving the Bill of Rights resolution, North Carolina ratified the Constitution. (North Carolina had resisted ratifying the Constitution because it did not guarantee individual rights.)
During this process, Vermont became the first state to join the Union after the Constitution was ratified, and Rhode Island (the lone holdout) also joined. Each state tallied its votes and forwarded the results to Congress.
