The Bill of Rights | The rare earliest printings of the final Senate and full Congressional texts of the Bill of Rights

The Bill of Rights

Two early printings of the Bill of Rights, in Gazette of the United States, No. XLVII & No. L. New York: John Fenno, Wednesday, September 23, 1789 & Saturday, October 1 [sic, corrected in manuscript to 3], 1789

2 newspaper issues, each folio, 4 pages (430 x 270 mm, uncut) on a bifolium of laid paper, text in three columns; lightest browning and spotting, later issue with separation at central fold, sewing holes at left margins, but withal in unsually, fine, fresh condition. Neatly housed together in a gilt-lettered maroon morocco portfolio.

These are the rare earliest printings of the final Senate and full Congressional texts of the Bill of Rights, the most profound guarantee of personal liberty ever incorporated into a written constitution. In this document, the Founding Fathers established the absolute protections that are the basis of American liberty.

In December 1787 Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison, “a bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.” Opponents of the proposed Constitution had often pointed to its lack of these guarantees, and the First Congress made their adoption one of its first orders of business.

"When the first Congress, along with President George Washington, gathered in New York City in 1789, Americans did not assume that the process of constitution-making was now—or ever would be—complete. Many expected the document to be amended almost immediately. Several state conventions had ratified the Constitution with the expectation that their suggestions for its improvement would be taken up and adopted. Most of the proposed amendments grew out of one of the main critiques that Antifederalists such as the Pennsylvania addressers had leveled against the Constitution: that it lacked a bill of rights resembling those attached to most state constitutions. Americans strongly desired guarantees that the federal government would not use its considerable powers to infringe key individual rights. … The Philadelphia convention may not have given much thought to a bill of rights, but it had provided a method by which Americans could add one. Article V of the Constitution outlined the procedure for amending the nation's fundamental law" (Colonists, Citizens, Constitutions, pp. 81–82).

There was no shortage of suggestions as to what a bill of rights should contain. In addition to the provisions of the various state declarations of rights, the ratifying conventions put forth a substantial number of proposals, ranging from South Carolina's four to New York's fifty-seven.

On 4 May 1789, James Madison proposed in the House of Representatives that debate begin on a series of amendments to the Constitution to serve as a bill of rights. Debate began on 8 June and was then referred to a select committee of eleven which, under the close guidance of Madison, created an initial draft that was presented to the House on 28 July. That draft was presented as revisions to the text of the Constitution itself, a confusing and ambiguous method that diluted the committee's charge: creating a clearly defined set of rights to be enshrined under the protection of the United States Constitution. On 24 August the proposals were more clearly stated and formatted as "Articles in addition to, and amendment of, the Constitution of the United States of America … pursuant to the fifth Article of the original Constitution."

The House's proposed seventeen amendments were "printed for the consideration of the Senate," which, through debate and reconciliation, combination and elimination, produced a roster of twelve projected amendments, which are printed here on the front page of the 23 September issue of the Gazette of the United States—the de facto newspaper of record for the federal government—the same day they were proposed by the Senate.

After further debate and refinement, the two houses of congress agreed to the final text of the proposed amendments to the Constitution. The following day, 26 September, the Senate concurred with the House joint resolution to send copies of the amendments to the states for ratification. The twelve proposed amendments were ordered to be engrossed on vellum, signed by Speaker of the House Frederick Augustus Muhlenberg and President of the Senate John Adams, attested by the clerk of the House of Representatives and the secretary of the Senate, and transmitted, with a circular covering letter from President George Washington, to the state executives for the consideration of their respective legislatures. Washington's letter, 2 October 1789, stated simply: "In pursuance of the enclosed resolution I have the honor to transmit to your Excellency a copy of the amendments proposed to be added to the Constitution of the United States. I have the honor to be, with due consideration, Your Excellency’s most obedient Servant" (Papers of George Washington, Presidential Series, ed. Twohig, 4:125).

On 3 October 1789, the Gazette of the United States printed the final text of the twelve proposed amendments, incorporating the final revisions agreed to by both the House and the Senate. The most significant of these changes, documented in the texts printed in these two issues of the Gazette, involved what are known today as the First Amendment (rephrasing the prohibition of the establishment of religion) and the Sixth Amendment (concerning the right to trial by jury). These two newspapers contain the first publication of the twelve amendments recommended to the states by Congress for ratification in their penultimate and final forms.

The first two proposed amendments actually failed to gain the support of three-quarters of the states, but the proposed third through twelfth amendments were adopted and became the first ten amendments to the Constitution—the Bill of Rights. Oddly, the second proposed amendment "mandated that any pay raises for Congress take effect only after an intervening election. This would prevent legislators from increasing their own salaries immediately. Americans apparently did not consider this issue very important at the time, and the states failed to ratify the amendment. Incredibly, in 1992, after sitting on the books for over two centuries, the proposal finally achieved ratification by more than three-fourths of the (now fifty) states, and it became part of the Constitution as the Twenty-Seventh Amendment" (Colonists, Citizens, Constitutions, p. 86). (And in 1939, the sesquicentennial of its proposal to the states, the Bill of Rights was belatedly ratified by Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Georgia.)