The Confederated Congress dissolved itself on March 4, 1789 and immediately met as the first session of the United States Congress. Eleven of thirteen states had approved the new Constitution – the other two would the following year – to replace the Articles of Confederation. The new constitution was ratified with ten amendments, largely the work of James Madison. The amendments, the Bill of Rights, were added partly from political expediency and compromise to ensure ratification of the Constitution. Madison wrote, “Bill of Rights—useful—not essential.” A couple of the more famous Founding Fathers are on record about the amendments to the new Constitution.
- “…whilst you carefully avoid every alteration which might endanger the benefits of an united and effective government, or which ought to await the future lessons of experience; a reverence for the characteristic rights of freemen, and a regard for public harmony, will sufficiently influence your deliberations on the question, how far the former can be impregnably fortified or the latter be safely and advantageously promoted.” – George Washington
- “I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as a civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.” – Thomas Jefferson
You can draw your own conclusion about what they would think of “A well regulated Militia” in the twenty-first century.
