ABSTRACT
The Bill of Rights was born an orphan, the offspring of a quarrel between two giants of America’s founding generation. Patrick Henry wanted to use a bill of rights to preserve state power or, even better in his view, to undermine the Constitution. The issue of the missing bill of rights became the paramount issue of debate during the campaign for ratification. Anti-federalists would demand that a bill of rights be added, and try to get the ratification votes made conditional on the addition of such a bill. Under the new Constitution, the state legislatures were to elect the United States senators. That meant that Henry, the pre-eminent power in Virginia politics, could name that state’s senators. The surest way to quiet the calls for a new convention was to pass a bill of rights stealing from the opposition’s list the most popular but least threatening amendments.
