Bill of Rights

The Library of Virginia owns one of the twelve surviving original copies of the Bill of Rights. In September 1789 Congress submitted twelve proposed amendments to the new Constitution of the United States. This is the very copy that was sent to the Virginia General Assembly for ratification or rejection. When the assembly ratified the amendments on 15 December 1791, the third through twelfth articles became the first through tenth amendments to the Constitution. Those ten amendments are known as the Bill of Rights.

The first amendment never received approval of enough state legislatures to become part of the Constitution. The second was finally ratified in 1992 and became the Twenty-Seventh Amendment.

The Bill of Rights was derived from many sources. Some of its provisions can be traced back to the English Bill of Rights of 1689. Some came from the Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776. (To see George Mason's draft for the Virginia Declaration of Rights, click here.) Others were suggested by state conventions when they ratified the Constitution in 1787 and 1788. In the Virginia Convention of 1788, Patrick Henry and George Mason argued strongly for the inclusion of a Bill of Rights. The freedom of religion clause in the First Amendment was also influenced by the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, passed in 1786.

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