History - Bill of Rights?

Question

I've heard this argument regarding the adoption of the Bill of Rights.

It was argued that it served no purpose BECAUSE there was no provision in the body of the Constitution that allowed the government to establish a religion or infringe freedom of speech, THEREFORE saying the same thing again in the Bill of Rights is redundant and possibly dangerous.

Dangerous? This raises the possibility that the only limit on government size and function is those limits explicitly enumerated in the Bill of Rights.

The problem is I can find no documentation on this point. Is there a newspaper article, first hand account, or any historical evidence that confirms this discussion?

Answer 1

Take a look at "The Federalist Papers," a collection of essays written in 1787 and '88, when ratification of the Constitution was being debated. One of the essays in that book (number 84, I believe) sets forth arguments against the Bill of Rights. I think Alexander Hamilton wrote that essay, but you should double check me on that. It's been a while since I read it.

Answer 2

Ron Paul 08'

Answer 3

The debate over religion, the press, and free speech was omnipresent in the day. There were colonies that had previously gone to war with other colonies over religion prior to the revolution during the period of the 100 years war. The press was not protected and some commentary had gotten members jailed for slander and even threatened with execution for sedition under British rule.

We take many of things for granted because we often fail to see them in a historical context. Most of the colonies had some form of religious center that made them potentially individually hostile to one another.

This was because of the refuge status many had built into their charters, from the Catholic Maryland to the Quaker Pennsylvania, from French Huguenots to their Catholics and the many Jews that helped found Dutch colonies and escape European religious intolerance and the inquisition.

Jews along with the secret societies of the Freemasons had helped fund the Revolution in its most dire moments. Even Native American animists were greatly respected by many of the founders and they sought inclusion rather than outright rejection of the native people, after all they had been inspired in their model by the platform they saw in the Six Nations Tribal Council of the Great Lakes Iroquois Confederation.

The Anglican Church and Catholicism had not yet gotten over the reformation and its divisiveness had spread to the colonies, let alone the Catholic Church ending practices of persecution by the inquisition against native Americans from north to south or other sects and religions.

In many cases more secular colonists had simply overrun the minority founders during the 17th and early 18th century by the sheer numbers of immigrants in a short period but these earlier groups still held power and prestige.

Many groups were lobbying for a single official *religion* and given the history of divisiveness the drafters of the Constitution understood, they felt it was critical (many were after all *Deists*) to literally nip that trend in the bud by preempting the debate with a total ban of one concept (officialdom) linked to a blanket protection of the more valuable aspect (individual worship) that had contributed to the creation of 13 colonies in the first place, the quest for religious tolerance.

Remember the First Amendment is the only one about religion and it includes in its language both the protections of the press and free speech in general. So long as religion was kept away from official status it was felt the contentiousness of religion could be contained to local debate and not reach the division status of open warfare that it was perceived to represent from a historical perspective.

The other 9 were on many different aspects from the concern over individual possession of firearms to the right of assembly and the *civil* right of making law read #10.

The most important unifying aspect of the Bill of Rights is that it is about specific *Rights* and guaranteed protections for the citizens.

The actual Constitution is more about the formation and structure of government (trilateral division of power), its limitations and powers (taxes, military etc) but does not in fact much address the rights of individuals and this was felt to be a gross oversight by the founders that was swiftly addressed with the Bill of Rights that after all are the first TEN AMENDMENTS in one package, to the document they had just ratified.

The other aspect of the debate over the Federalist doctrine (and I agree wholeheartedly with the previous comment on its importance to the discussion) had to do with the separation of power between States and Federal authority but in the midst of that analysis it was determined to distinguish individual authority as important to protect as well, hence the creation of the Bill of Rights.


Article 10 reads:
Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

***

This is the quintessential article that most today are ignorant of and was the core sentiment uniting the revolutionaries into a cohesive structure and self recognizing, social experiment that was to shape all politics to come.

The Bill of Rights was how the Federalists (Constitutionalists) came to find an uneasy peace with the Antifederalists (State Righters or Confederates) even though they knew that eventually it would result in a Civil War, that they could only hope the Union would survive.