The first ten amendments added to the Constitution by the very first Congress are known as The Bill of Rights. As it limits the national governments I am fond of calling it the Bill of Government Restrictions \u2013 The things they absolutely can not do.<\/p>\n
Federalists Vs. Anti-Federalists<\/strong> Power Corrupts<\/strong>
The Federalists advocated for a strong centralized national government. They believed that the structure of the Constitution made it clear that if it wasn\u2019t enumerated in the Constitution that the national government couldn\u2019t do it.
The Anti-Federalists didn\u2019t trust a strong centralized national government to stick to it and want listed the most important things that the national government couldn\u2019t do. They felt that it was essential to explicitly define the limits of the national government with a Bill of Rights.
For the Constitution to go into effect, it needed to be ratified by 9 of the 13 states or 2\/3 as stipulated in Article VII.
4 of the 9 required a Bill of Rights before their state would ratify.
The Constitution was officially ratified in June of 1788. When the first Congress met in March of 1789, 11 states were represented and the Bill of Rights were added as the first set of Amendments.<\/p>\n
We now know that the Federalists were wrong. We allowed the government to make laws outside their enumerated powers. This has given them free reign over the people, when it is We the People, that have authority over everything not enumerated. What they do is not for our good but their own.<\/p>\n