The Bill of Rights: Core Documents

This collection of documents on the Bill of Rights is part of the Ashbrook Center's extended series of document collections covering major periods, themes, and institutions in American history and government. It is the third of four volumes that will cover the Founding of the United States. The American Founding, already published, is the capstone of the four. The others-the volume on the Constitutional Convention, also already published; this collection; and a volume on the ratification of the Constitution, which will follow it-tell aspects of the founding story in more detail. The documents in this collection provide historical background on the rights the colonists claimed to hold, and why and how those rights became the rights enshrined in the first ten amendments to the Constitution. It focuses on the argument over whether a bill of rights was necessary, as this argument revealed much about the founding generation's view of government and, in particular, the federal arrangement in the Constitution. Together, the four volumes on the Founding provide the essentials for understanding the Founding as the Founders understood it.