In the United States, the Bill of Rights is the term for the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. These amendments explicitly limit the Federal government's powers, protecting the rights of the people by preventing Congress from abridging freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of religious worship, and the right to bear arms, preventing unreasonable search and seizure, cruel and unusual punishment, and self-incrimination, and guaranteeing due process of law and a speedy public trial with an impartial jury. In addition, the Bill of Rights states that "the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people," and reserves all powers not specifically granted to the Federal government to the citizenry or States. These amendments came into effect on December 15, 1791, when ratified by three-fourths of the States.
The Bill of Rights is the third of the three Charters of Freedom along with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
Bill of Right in the United States, the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which were adopted as a single unit on December 15, 1791, and which constitute a collection of mutually reinforcing guarantees of individual rights and of limitations on federal and state governments. The Bill of Rights derives from the Magna Carta (1215), the English Bill of Rights (1689), the colonial struggle against king and Parliament, and a gradually broadening concept of equality among the American people. Virginia's 1776 Declaration of Rights, drafted chiefly by George Mason, was a notable forerunner. Besides being axioms of government, the guarantees in the Bill of Rights have binding legal force. Acts of Congress in conflict with them may be voided by the U.S. Supreme Court when the question of the constitutionality of such acts arises in litigation. Under the First Amendment, Congress can make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise, or abridging freedom of speech or press or the right to assemble and petition for redress of grievances. Hostility to standing armies found expression in a guarantee of the people's right to bear arms and in limitation of the quartering of soldiers in private houses.
The Fourth Amendment secures the people against unreasonable searches and seizures and forbids the issuance of warrants except upon probable cause and directed to specific persons and places. The Fifth Amendment requires grand jury indictment in prosecutions for major crimes and prohibits double jeopardy for a single offense. It provides that no person shall be compelled to testify against himself, forbids the taking of life, liberty, or property without due process of law or the taking of private property for public use without just compensation. By the Sixth Amendment, an accused person is to have a speedy public trial by jury, to be informed of the nature of the accusation, to be confronted with prosecution witnesses, and to have the assistance of counsel. Excessive bail or fines and cruel or unusual punishment are forbidden by the Eighth Amendment. The Ninth Amendment protects unenumerated residual rights of the people, and by the Tenth, powers not delegated to the United States are reserved to the states or the people. After the Civil War, slavery was abolished, and the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) declared that all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction are citizens thereof. It forbids the states to abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, or to deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. After 1924, the due process clause was construed by the Supreme Court as guaranteeing that many of the same rights protected from federal violation were also protected from violation by the states. The clause finally made effective the major portion of Madison's unaccepted 1789 proposal.
WOMEN VOTING
From the founding of the United States, women were almost universally excluded from voting. Only when women began to chafe at this restriction, however, was their exclusion made explicit. (See map.) The movement for woman suffrage started in the early 19th century during the agitation against slavery. Women such as Lucretia Mott showed a keen interest in the antislavery movement and proved to be admirable public speakers. When Elizabeth Cady Stanton joined the antislavery forces, she and Mott agreed that the rights of women, as well as those of slaves, needed redress. In July 1848 they issued a call for a convention to discuss the issue of women's rights; this convention met in Stanton's hometown, Seneca Falls, New York, on July 19-20, 1848, and issued a declaration that called for woman suffrage and for the right of women to educational and employment opportunities. (See Seneca Falls Convention.) It was followed in 1850 by the first national convention of the women's movement, held in Worcester, Massachusetts, by Lucy Stone and a group of prominent Eastern suffragists. Another convention, held in Syracuse, New York, in 1852, was the occasion of the first joint venture between Stanton and the dynamic suffragist leader Susan B. Anthony; together these two figures led the American suffragist movement for the next 50 years. Other woman suffrage conventions were held as the movement gained its first mass strength, but at first no way of extending the vote to women was known except by amendments to the constitutions of the various states. Several attempts were made in this regard after the American Civil War (1861-65), but even though the Territory of Wyoming granted women the right to vote in all elections in 1869, it soon became apparent that an amendment of the federal Constitution would be a preferable plan. Accordingly, the National Woman Suffrage Association was formed in 1869 with the declared object of securing the ballot for women by an amendment to the Constitution. Anthony and Stanton were the leaders of this organization, which held a convention every year for 50 years after its founding. In 1869 another organization, the American Woman Suffrage Association, was founded by Lucy Stone with the aim of securing woman suffrage by obtaining amendments to that effect in the constitutions of the various states. In 1890 the two organizations united under the name National American Woman Suffrage Association and worked together for almost 30 years.
When Wyoming entered the Union in 1890, it became the first state whose constitution accorded women the right to vote. Subsequently, vigorous campaigns were conducted to persuade state legislatures to submit to their voters amendments to state constitutions conferring full suffrage to women in state affairs. Efforts were also made to give women the right to vote in presidential elections and, in some states, the right to vote in municipal and local elections. In the next 25 years various individual states yielded to the movement's demands and enfranchised their women; each such state increased the members of Congress elected partly by women. These members were thus at least partly obliged by the nature of their constituency to vote for a woman suffrage amendment to the United States Constitution. By 1918 women had acquired equal suffrage with men in 15 states. World War I, and the major role played in it by women in various capacities, broke down most of the remaining opposition to woman suffrage in the United States. Amendments to the federal Constitution concerning woman suffrage had been introduced into Congress in 1878 and 1914, but the 1878 amendment had been overwhelmingly defeated, and the 1914 amendment had narrowly failed to gain even a simple majority of the votes in the House of Representatives and the Senate (a two-thirds majority vote in Congress By 1918, however, both major political parties were committed to woman suffrage, and the amendment was carried by the necessary two-thirds majorities in both the House and Senate in January 1918 and June 1919, respectively. Vigorous campaigns were then waged to secure ratification of the amendment by two-thirds of the state legislatures, and on August 18, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the amendment. On August 26 the Nineteenth Amendment was proclaimed by the secretary of state as being part of the Constitution of the United States. Women in the United States were enfranchised on an equal basis with men. The text reads as follows:
“Even if a flag in gone, the Bill of Rights remains”
Burn in flag in celebration of freedom that flag symbolizes.