What were some of the key debates over the framing of the Bill of Rights?

0:00Video Title: What were some of the key debates over the framing of the Bill of Rights? Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVbYK5jVA2Q Transcript generated by YouTube Transcript Generator - Extract transcripts from any YouTube video instantly at https://transcriptgenerator.org ======================================== [MUSIC] Now, what's interesting is the fight in the House. That Anti-Federalists, who, after all, had been screaming that they wanted a Bill of Rights, the Anti-Federalists were against Madison's Bill of Rights. Because they were politically astute, too and they knew that if a Federalist Congress, that is made up of supporters of a strong central government passed a Bill of Rights, that would give them a real permanent hold on the government.

0:40The Anti-Federalists tried to drag the heels and prevent this Bill of Rights from being passed. The leaders of this movement were against the Bill of Rights in the Congress were Elbridge Gerry from Massachusetts, and James Jackson from Georgia. Elbridge Gerry was the most hated man in American politics at the time, he was very smart, he was very rich, he was very well educated. He was very clever. When he decided he wanted to hold the floor of the Congress, nobody could shut him up. He got up and spoke endlessly until I think James Madison was ready to tear his hair out. People were saying things like, sit down, you already said that. You've already talked about didn't face Elbridge Gerry. There were four issues.

1:40First, they wanted all 120 amendments considered. That was Elbridge Gerry's argument that he made over and over again, nobody wanted to consider 120 proposals, and nobody wanted to consider proposals that would turn the federal government into a powerless shell of a government. They had four main arguments about the 12 proposals. The first argument was, they wanted the states to maintain their own militias. That is, they wanted a strong amendment that now we call the Second Amendment. Strong amendment that said that the States had the right to their own Militias. Why? Well, partly in case there was Indian attack.

2:30But mostly because the Federal government became tyrannical and organized soldiery, an army to march on your state and take it over the Militia could defend the State. The second Anti-Federalist demand was they wanted to include the right of the voters, the constituents of each of these representatives to impose binding instructions on their representatives.

3:06That is, the voters would say, this is what we want you to do in Congress, and you are bound by our demands to do this. This points to a difference between the Federalists and Anti-Federalist view of representation. The Federalists believed people voted for men they thought, and it was always men, men they thought were capable and intelligent and wise, and patriotic, and then you left them to make their own decisions. The Anti-Federalists said, no. They are our voice in the government, and we have the right to tell them what to do. They lost that argument. They lost it on a part what we would call today a party line vote. The Federalists said, no, we won't put that in. The third was a single word,

4:02and this was a bitter fight. They wanted the word expressly put into the Tenth Amendment. They wanted the Tenth Amendment to read, the power is not expressly delegated to the United States government, the Federal government, belonged to the states. If they had had that one word inserted, if they had won that argument, we would not have had a bank of the United States.

4:36There would be scores of things we wouldn't have because it would mean you couldn't have a loose construction of the Constitution. It would mean that the necessary and proper clause was paralyzed. This demand would have restored, really, the sovereignty, the hierarchy of the states, and they didn't get this in, but that was a bidder fight. They won on the fourth issue, but they didn't win as Anti-Federalists, they won because the Federalist Senate members agreed with them. Madison had wanted to put teeth in this Bill of Rights, he wanted it to say that the Federal government had the right to intervene if any state was abusing the civil rights of its citizens. When the 12th Amendments got to the Senate, the Senate voted down that sentence. Why did they voted down?

5:43Because senators were chosen by their state legislatures well into the 19th century. They were not elected. People didn't elect the senators, the assembly, the legislature chose them. The senators did not want to be seen as responsible for approving a rule that would allow the federal government to intervene in the powers of the State governments like this, and so they took that out.

6:16Madison really mourned this because he thought that people accused him very early on when they heard about this crazy idea of a Bill of Rights for the Federal government. They said, oh, it's just, they called it a paper barrier. What good is it going to be? They don't have any power to enforce it. Here, Madison had written in the power to enforce it.

6:43Now, we have that power to enforce it today from the 14th Amendment passed after the American Civil War but the Senate vetoed this. They said, absolutely not in 1789. But Madison thought that he had scored a victory, not just in calming people's fears of the federal government down by having this Bill of Rights, but also, he thought that the greatest threat of tyranny in America didn't come from the government. It came from the majority of the voters that the majority could impose its will on the minority and oppress them. Now, his idea of the minority was not African Americans, they were largely enslaved. His idea of the minority were small religious groups, small at the time, the Baptists, for instance. That religions that were frowned

7:46upon would be oppressed. He said, what we have to do is instill in the American voting population, and internalization of the idea that these rights belong to everyone, majority and minority, he didn't have the word internalize. He wanted a little bell to go off in people's heads when they planned on forbidding the Baptists to create a church. He wanted a bell to go off in their head. They said, the Bill of Rights says we can't do that. The Bill of Rights says we're better than that. The Bill of Rights says these rights belong to everyone. Madison thought that in the long run, the idea that this would become the credo of America was the best thing to come out of the Bill of Rights. Of course,

8:47it has become that it actually has become that. Most people think that the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights are the two bases on which our democracy is founded. It's to Madison's credit, who did it, really[MUSIC]