The Bill of Rights Is Ratified
Ten amendments guaranteeing individual liberties, the price of ratifying the Constitution
Quick facts
- Ratified
- December 15, 1791
- Number of amendments
- First 10 amendments to the Constitution
- Protects
- Speech, religion, press, assembly, fair trial, and more
- Proposed by Congress
- 1789
What happened
Several states had ratified the Constitution only on the understanding that a list of protected rights would be added, and many people feared the new federal government could trample individual liberties. In 1789 Congress proposed a set of amendments, and on December 15, 1791, three-quarters of the states ratified ten of them, known ever since as the Bill of Rights. They guarantee freedoms including speech, religion, press, and assembly, protection against unreasonable searches, the right to a fair trial, and limits on federal power, defining citizens' rights in relation to the newly established government. The framers of these protections had fresh memories of British violations of civil rights before and during the Revolution.
Why it matters
The Bill of Rights sits at the heart of American ideas about individual liberty and limited government. Its guarantees, especially the First Amendment's protections of speech and religion and the later-incorporated protections applied to the states, have been argued over in courtrooms for more than two centuries and remain central to how Americans understand their freedoms.
How we know
The ratified amendments and the congressional resolution proposing them survive in the National Archives, and the state ratification votes that completed the process by December 1791 are documented in the legislative records of the period.
Sources
- National Archives. Bill of Rights (1791) · Primary source (author-declared)archives.gov · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- HISTORY. Bill of Rights · Reputable sourcehistory.com · The domain "history.com" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
See something wrong? . Corrections with a source get fixed fastest.
Part of a timelineHistory of the United States32 events · A hundred English colonists on a swampy island, a constitution argued out over one Philadelphia summer, a country that doubled its size for four cents an acre and fought a civil war over who counted as free, and the superpower that came out the other sideView all →